SJS
Hall of Fame Member
I have absolutely no doubt that Dravis is feeling a bit lost at present. Not just atthe batting crease but also in the dressing room and in the team. What I don't wish to do is speculate on the reasons. Thay could be so many. After all he is a recent captain who left in a surprise ecisions stating he wasn't enjoying it any more. There is a recent history attached to his captaincy starting with Ganguly's departure, Chappell's stay and departure etc.
His own personality too is of a quiet retiring person which makes such times doubly obvious to all of the onlookers. One can only hope that he will come out of the melancholy mood he finds himself in and show the joy of being on the field as part of team India. No one would want Dravid to not enjoying playing as well to add to his captaincy woes. I am sure he could do with words of friendly assurance and hope someone in the team wopuld be doing it.
Here is a terrific article on Dravid that I read today.
His own personality too is of a quiet retiring person which makes such times doubly obvious to all of the onlookers. One can only hope that he will come out of the melancholy mood he finds himself in and show the joy of being on the field as part of team India. No one would want Dravid to not enjoying playing as well to add to his captaincy woes. I am sure he could do with words of friendly assurance and hope someone in the team wopuld be doing it.
Here is a terrific article on Dravid that I read today.
Deconstructing Dravid
Sanjay Jha, cricketnext.com
Tuesday , October 16, 2007
Sanjay Jha, cricketnext.com
Tuesday , October 16, 2007
As I drove past the Wankhede stadium this sultry morning, I wondered about the ballooning speculation surrounding the futile, meaningless encounter in the last ODI match between the already imperious victors Australia and the demolished devils of MS Dhoni's India in Mumbai tomorrow.
Everyone who is anyone from Mungerilal to Merchant and Mehta to Munnabhai is talking in not so hushed whispers about the one key question, will Rahul Dravid be dropped for tomorrow's inconsequential game? Just a few weeks ago, actually, and this question would have invited vitriolic ridicule from all and sundry. So why are we all suddenly getting into such an animated state over the apparently cracking Wall?
The answer is simple: not many people know the inscrutable Mr Rahul Dravid. Certainly not the way we have already figured out the spunky attitude of MS Dhoni, or the partying ways of Yuvraj Singh, the calibrated diplomacy of Sachin Tendulkar or the pugnacious spirit of Sourav Ganguly. Dravid, on an overall basis, remains a convoluted mystery. All we know is that he does not make for great sound bytes. But that hardly does justice to the magnificent talent of The Wall.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry is now commenting on Rahul's "body language". I think it's utter crap. For heaven's sake, he is no longer the skipper, so what do you want him to do? Keep running all over the place barking orders? And if he does that we will accuse him of unwarranted interference? If he just does his job of fielding, we think he is disenchanted, disinterested and despondent or all of the three. Give Dravid a break, guys.
Also, if Sachin Tendulkar can have several bouts of insipid form and yet return each time with a glorious revival story, surely Dravid is entitled to the unenviable perk of a temporary loss of form. The Wall is not just all bricks and mortar, my friends. He has hair loss, suffers dehydration, can even smile in canned commercials, and can therefore have his red blushes with a few failed efforts.
Frankly, I think the reaction from all quarters (particularly the over-analysis-causes-paralysis gang of gossip-monger commentators) is over the top simply because we are so unused to Dravid having an abject run. It's as simple as that. It's like Shah Rukh Khan getting a bad review. Yet, we all know it's actually no big deal, as it happens all the time to all sportsmen.
What has however provided juicy gossip for the sly chefs cooking a hot and sour soup is that it has coincided with his relinquishment of the top job.
I do believe that Dravid is struggling to come to terms with relative anonymity that follows the raging media hype around an Indian captain. He is not the one to miss the spotlight, for sure, but it takes time to get acclimatised to keeping your mental configurations to yourself, as Dravid now has a strict embargo on speak-time like any other player.
Second, you also keep asking yourself, in the initial period, what would you have done different had you been calling the shots while on the field. It happens. That partly explains Dravid' body language out in the middle; he is actually thinking about what he would have done, bowling change, field placement blah blah. It can momentarily derail you. It can happen to the best of us.
We will have to be extremely ambitious to expect Rahul to take his shirt off, or shoot his mouth off at the slightest provocation, as he is clearly not the personality type. We need to understand this with suitable gravity.
Dravid is not an extroverted social animal, he is more a disciplined planned programmer seeking perfection in everything he does. Note how unlike many of his illustrious colleagues, he is rarely suffered injuries, has never been in any on-field unpleasantness, and has no extra-constitutional distractions.
In the corporate world, they would call him the process-compliant "manager".
Sourav, by contrast, would be a leader, simply because he would be the bigger risk-taker, be out-of-the-box, more inspirational. That is why Rahul is a largely misunderstood man as a captain, and his declaration against England in the last Test of the series is more a manifestation of his personality type, not just a case of erroneous judgment.
It is Rahul's single-minded focus on immediate goals which resulted in two biggest blunders of his professional career; the estrangement with Sachin Tendulkar after the Multan declaration, being the first. And the now much-diarised voluminous silence during the dark days of Indian cricket; the Sourav Ganguly-Greg Chappell spit and spat.
In both cases, consistent with his core character, Dravid maintained a stupefying mummifying stance, even when his impenetrable silence had reached deafening proportions. It did not help. I don't think Rahul recognized then the long-term implications of his deliberate attempt to sidestep a issue that had struck a deep emotional chord with cricket lovers, and almost divided the country into polarized camps.
As I am sure it did his team. Frankly, why Dravid chose to allow Greg Chappell to repeatedly humiliate Sourav, and almost religiously defended his atrocious actions (like the upturned finger incident in Kolkotta) will remain a perpetual why-did-he? But that's Rahul for you.
Yes, I am sure somewhere he is caught between the devil and the deep sea. He has somehow lost the same camaraderie that he had with his two colleagues who make the Big 3, and by hurriedly announcing his resignation when his young batch-mates were just settling into the T20 mode in South Africa, he may have just felt that he had let everyone down.
That's an internal thing that Rahul has to sort out himself.
He took a certain decision that he thought was good for himself, his cricket, and thereby Indian cricket as well. It is fine, and we should respect that. After all, how many of us will have the inner strength of conviction to chuck up a job that everyone craves for?
I feel that the real reason Dravid left skipper-ship was because he had, like any sensitive, sensible guy, developed cold contempt for the BCCI and it's politicking office-bearers, maverick selection swings, and rubbish standards of governance.
Frankly, I think Dravid could not stomach the exaggerated knee-jerk reactions of the BCCI in openly castigating the senior players post the World Cup triumph, the threat of endorsement cuts, the freeze on graded payments etc.
I think as a leader of the team that was being publicly chided, he took the brunt of the lethal attack. Somewhere it hurt his self-respect, his own professional pride. The fact that he had silently suffered Chappell's experimentations, even eulogized them, had considerably weakened him.
Secondly, he was fully aware that the BCCI was a disastrous professional body which would take Indian cricket to Neverland, and that disturbed him. I am sure Sachin, Sourav and Rahul were fully aware of the paradox, the grotesque showmanship of BCCI who were parading their superstars for IPL T20 cricket, when the trio had voluntarily side-stepped from T20 already.
It was juvenile stuff, and that BCCI would do anything to create distractions from ICL was obvious. Not surprisingly, Dravid's resignation followed immediately thereafter.
Look at how a senior BCCI official reacted with vehement rebuttals when Dravid called for a re-look of playing schedules, as excess cricket was playing havoc with players fitness. It was obvious that the BCCI cared two hoots for the views of the Indian captain no less, as long as the game delivered on cash revenues.
Any captain would have seethed with impotent rage; even the usually calm Dravid was in this case, no exception. The chief selector had his own ways of influencing team selection, and clearly, rattled Dravid. Something tells me that he knew his extending the mantle of captaincy was short-lived quite some time ago.
Chetan Desai, an office bearer from Goa wrote a confidential report which was leaked by "authoritative sources" highly placed within BCCI on the Virendra Sehwag selection issue. When Dravid appropriately rubbished his claims, the BCCI publicly embarrassed the Indian cricket captain by almost forcing him to issue an apology.
In my opinion, Dravid's disaffection with the top job was on a downhill slide much before the World Cup.
Dravid, unlike Sachin and Sourav (who have already weathered several storms) will take time getting accustomed to being led by a new captain, especially as the successor is being hailed as India's New Hope and also commands a world champion tag in his first outing itself.
In a sense, Dhoni stole the thunder and lightning from Dravid's dramatic decision of resignation, which got a sudden burial in the aftermath of the heady T20 triumph. Dravid's legacy never really got a thorough examination. He never really got the accolades he truly deserved, he never received the credit and respect for trying hard as he did. It can unsettle anyone.
And the paradox is that MSD's image is that of Master and Commander who captured the pirates after the former captain abdicated responsibility. But then who in their wildest dreams expected India to win the T20 World Cup? Frankly, Dravid deserves better. But as Ganguly can perhaps tell him, life is not fair. But life also goes on.
Dravid need not take a look in the mirror. He must just watch those calm eyes, seeped in resolution, fearless as they stare back, at the great White Lightning called Alan Donald. Hit mercilessly for a six, Donald charged at The Wall. Abused him. Sledged him. How can you do that to my unplayable quickie, you pip-squeak Indian with a dead bat?
Donald's expression betrayed disgust. Contempt. Anger. But The Wall stood his ground. Unmoved. Unaffected. Undeterred.
Donald took a longer start, a deep breath, charged in his inimitable run-up, a menacing proposition, a wounded South African lion, hurling another brutal one at the defiant pip-squeak. Seconds later, all we could hear was the sound of the white ball crashing on the billboards.
Dravid will be back. He is not called The Wall for nothing.
Everyone who is anyone from Mungerilal to Merchant and Mehta to Munnabhai is talking in not so hushed whispers about the one key question, will Rahul Dravid be dropped for tomorrow's inconsequential game? Just a few weeks ago, actually, and this question would have invited vitriolic ridicule from all and sundry. So why are we all suddenly getting into such an animated state over the apparently cracking Wall?
The answer is simple: not many people know the inscrutable Mr Rahul Dravid. Certainly not the way we have already figured out the spunky attitude of MS Dhoni, or the partying ways of Yuvraj Singh, the calibrated diplomacy of Sachin Tendulkar or the pugnacious spirit of Sourav Ganguly. Dravid, on an overall basis, remains a convoluted mystery. All we know is that he does not make for great sound bytes. But that hardly does justice to the magnificent talent of The Wall.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry is now commenting on Rahul's "body language". I think it's utter crap. For heaven's sake, he is no longer the skipper, so what do you want him to do? Keep running all over the place barking orders? And if he does that we will accuse him of unwarranted interference? If he just does his job of fielding, we think he is disenchanted, disinterested and despondent or all of the three. Give Dravid a break, guys.
Also, if Sachin Tendulkar can have several bouts of insipid form and yet return each time with a glorious revival story, surely Dravid is entitled to the unenviable perk of a temporary loss of form. The Wall is not just all bricks and mortar, my friends. He has hair loss, suffers dehydration, can even smile in canned commercials, and can therefore have his red blushes with a few failed efforts.
Frankly, I think the reaction from all quarters (particularly the over-analysis-causes-paralysis gang of gossip-monger commentators) is over the top simply because we are so unused to Dravid having an abject run. It's as simple as that. It's like Shah Rukh Khan getting a bad review. Yet, we all know it's actually no big deal, as it happens all the time to all sportsmen.
What has however provided juicy gossip for the sly chefs cooking a hot and sour soup is that it has coincided with his relinquishment of the top job.
I do believe that Dravid is struggling to come to terms with relative anonymity that follows the raging media hype around an Indian captain. He is not the one to miss the spotlight, for sure, but it takes time to get acclimatised to keeping your mental configurations to yourself, as Dravid now has a strict embargo on speak-time like any other player.
Second, you also keep asking yourself, in the initial period, what would you have done different had you been calling the shots while on the field. It happens. That partly explains Dravid' body language out in the middle; he is actually thinking about what he would have done, bowling change, field placement blah blah. It can momentarily derail you. It can happen to the best of us.
We will have to be extremely ambitious to expect Rahul to take his shirt off, or shoot his mouth off at the slightest provocation, as he is clearly not the personality type. We need to understand this with suitable gravity.
Dravid is not an extroverted social animal, he is more a disciplined planned programmer seeking perfection in everything he does. Note how unlike many of his illustrious colleagues, he is rarely suffered injuries, has never been in any on-field unpleasantness, and has no extra-constitutional distractions.
In the corporate world, they would call him the process-compliant "manager".
Sourav, by contrast, would be a leader, simply because he would be the bigger risk-taker, be out-of-the-box, more inspirational. That is why Rahul is a largely misunderstood man as a captain, and his declaration against England in the last Test of the series is more a manifestation of his personality type, not just a case of erroneous judgment.
It is Rahul's single-minded focus on immediate goals which resulted in two biggest blunders of his professional career; the estrangement with Sachin Tendulkar after the Multan declaration, being the first. And the now much-diarised voluminous silence during the dark days of Indian cricket; the Sourav Ganguly-Greg Chappell spit and spat.
In both cases, consistent with his core character, Dravid maintained a stupefying mummifying stance, even when his impenetrable silence had reached deafening proportions. It did not help. I don't think Rahul recognized then the long-term implications of his deliberate attempt to sidestep a issue that had struck a deep emotional chord with cricket lovers, and almost divided the country into polarized camps.
As I am sure it did his team. Frankly, why Dravid chose to allow Greg Chappell to repeatedly humiliate Sourav, and almost religiously defended his atrocious actions (like the upturned finger incident in Kolkotta) will remain a perpetual why-did-he? But that's Rahul for you.
Yes, I am sure somewhere he is caught between the devil and the deep sea. He has somehow lost the same camaraderie that he had with his two colleagues who make the Big 3, and by hurriedly announcing his resignation when his young batch-mates were just settling into the T20 mode in South Africa, he may have just felt that he had let everyone down.
That's an internal thing that Rahul has to sort out himself.
He took a certain decision that he thought was good for himself, his cricket, and thereby Indian cricket as well. It is fine, and we should respect that. After all, how many of us will have the inner strength of conviction to chuck up a job that everyone craves for?
I feel that the real reason Dravid left skipper-ship was because he had, like any sensitive, sensible guy, developed cold contempt for the BCCI and it's politicking office-bearers, maverick selection swings, and rubbish standards of governance.
Frankly, I think Dravid could not stomach the exaggerated knee-jerk reactions of the BCCI in openly castigating the senior players post the World Cup triumph, the threat of endorsement cuts, the freeze on graded payments etc.
I think as a leader of the team that was being publicly chided, he took the brunt of the lethal attack. Somewhere it hurt his self-respect, his own professional pride. The fact that he had silently suffered Chappell's experimentations, even eulogized them, had considerably weakened him.
Secondly, he was fully aware that the BCCI was a disastrous professional body which would take Indian cricket to Neverland, and that disturbed him. I am sure Sachin, Sourav and Rahul were fully aware of the paradox, the grotesque showmanship of BCCI who were parading their superstars for IPL T20 cricket, when the trio had voluntarily side-stepped from T20 already.
It was juvenile stuff, and that BCCI would do anything to create distractions from ICL was obvious. Not surprisingly, Dravid's resignation followed immediately thereafter.
Look at how a senior BCCI official reacted with vehement rebuttals when Dravid called for a re-look of playing schedules, as excess cricket was playing havoc with players fitness. It was obvious that the BCCI cared two hoots for the views of the Indian captain no less, as long as the game delivered on cash revenues.
Any captain would have seethed with impotent rage; even the usually calm Dravid was in this case, no exception. The chief selector had his own ways of influencing team selection, and clearly, rattled Dravid. Something tells me that he knew his extending the mantle of captaincy was short-lived quite some time ago.
Chetan Desai, an office bearer from Goa wrote a confidential report which was leaked by "authoritative sources" highly placed within BCCI on the Virendra Sehwag selection issue. When Dravid appropriately rubbished his claims, the BCCI publicly embarrassed the Indian cricket captain by almost forcing him to issue an apology.
In my opinion, Dravid's disaffection with the top job was on a downhill slide much before the World Cup.
Dravid, unlike Sachin and Sourav (who have already weathered several storms) will take time getting accustomed to being led by a new captain, especially as the successor is being hailed as India's New Hope and also commands a world champion tag in his first outing itself.
In a sense, Dhoni stole the thunder and lightning from Dravid's dramatic decision of resignation, which got a sudden burial in the aftermath of the heady T20 triumph. Dravid's legacy never really got a thorough examination. He never really got the accolades he truly deserved, he never received the credit and respect for trying hard as he did. It can unsettle anyone.
And the paradox is that MSD's image is that of Master and Commander who captured the pirates after the former captain abdicated responsibility. But then who in their wildest dreams expected India to win the T20 World Cup? Frankly, Dravid deserves better. But as Ganguly can perhaps tell him, life is not fair. But life also goes on.
Dravid need not take a look in the mirror. He must just watch those calm eyes, seeped in resolution, fearless as they stare back, at the great White Lightning called Alan Donald. Hit mercilessly for a six, Donald charged at The Wall. Abused him. Sledged him. How can you do that to my unplayable quickie, you pip-squeak Indian with a dead bat?
Donald's expression betrayed disgust. Contempt. Anger. But The Wall stood his ground. Unmoved. Unaffected. Undeterred.
Donald took a longer start, a deep breath, charged in his inimitable run-up, a menacing proposition, a wounded South African lion, hurling another brutal one at the defiant pip-squeak. Seconds later, all we could hear was the sound of the white ball crashing on the billboards.
Dravid will be back. He is not called The Wall for nothing.
.
Gun.
