Lambasting the home side following India's innings and 52-run victory in the first Test at Multan on Thursday, the media unanimously declared Rahul Dravid's men a better team.

"This is without doubt the best Indian team ever," Pakistan's best-known cricket commentator Omar Kureishi wrote in the 'Dawn' newspaper.

"This is a team that has come with a mission. It is not distracted, it remains focussed.

"We were lulled into believing we had the edge over them with our bowling."

In previous tours of Pakistan between 1954 and 1989, India had lost five Tests and drew the remaining 15, prompting claims of a "mental block" when playing against the Pakistanis.

That India won in Multan without regular captain Sourav Ganguly and strike bowlers, Harbhajan Singh, Ashish Nehra and briefly Zaheer Khan, did not go unnoticed.

Stand-in captain Dravid "was his own man," declared Kureishi. "He provided the kind of leadership that moves mountains. He got the respect of team-mates, a sign that the players are loyal to Team India and not to individuals."

Dravid will lead India again in the second Test, starting at the Gaddafi stadium here on Monday, a match Pakistan must win to stay in contention for winning the three-Test series.

To achieve that, Kureishi noted, Pakistan needed "a huge leap of faith."

"An innings defeat carries its own stigma," he wrote. "It riles me and angers me when a team goes down without a semblance of a fight.

"One cannot even give the excuse that our players are tired. The Indians came to Pakistan after their hectic tour of Australia. They are the ones who should be tired.

"If the Pakistani players are tired, it must be from boredom, not from playing."

The performance of India's rookie left-arm seamer Irfan Pathan, who took a career-best 4-100 in the first innings and 2-26 in the second in only his third Test, drew much attention.

A report in the 'Nation' newspaper said the 19-year-old, who belonged to "India's strife-stricken, barbarically anti-Muslim state of Gujarat" had received tips from former Pakistani great Wasim Akram.