Agreed and I have mentioned it in the piece that he needs to be more assertive. I gave him some brownie points, for he has done something no other team other than Australia and England have done in South Africa , that is to draw a series that too after being one down.Great post. The only question for me is that I would be harsher on Dhoni, whose captaincy I thought was pretty dire.
Hmm.. Now you say that I remember it. It was the 1998 Series.. . Azhar mahmood scored some big hundreds.. However Pakistan was leading the series and lost the final gameI am quite sure that Pakistan drew a series in South Africa in the late 1990s.
I think similar to sachin,perhaps score more in the second test.Not sure what more Kallis could have done to get a 10.
Raina getting 2 with Unadkat getting 0? Raina deserved 0 if Unadkat did.
Also, you might want to edit to get Paul Harris a capital "H"
Agree that Harbhajan bowled as well as Zaheer, if not better.Agree with the Indian ratings except for Zaheer,Dhoni and Ishant.
All deserve less for me.
Zaheer had one very good test in the 2nd match,but was ordinary in the third. So does not deserve a 8 for me just for one test. Would have him on par with whatever Harbhajan gets ,if not lower.
Dhoni's captaincy in the last test was dire and though he did better than expected from the bat,7 is too high for him.
And no way does Ishant deserve a 5 . Except for the 1st innings of the last test ,where he was unlucky was ordinary throughout.
Deserves to be on par with Raina,Vijay for me.
This Rahul Dravid witch hunt is becoming a bit tedious, as far as i'm concerned. For example Laxman gets a 7 for one match winning inning and the rest of the tour has been worse than Dravid's for him. Yet Dravid gets only a two. I don't begrudge Laxman his time in the limelight for his match winning knock at all, i'm merely questioning why Dravid is being treated like he has been ****e in this tour when he hasn't been that bad? Sehwag was ****e in this tour, as were Raina, Ishant and Unadkat but not Dravid. He had an average tour and did something important for the team.Points out of ten for the Indians
1) Gautham Gambhir - seven
2) Virender Sehwag - two
3) Rahul Dravid - two
4) Sachin Tendulkar - eight
5) VVS Laxman - seven
6) Chetesthwar Pujara - four
7) MS Dhoni - five
8) Harbhajan Singh - six
9) Zaheer Khan - eight
10)Ishant Sharma - one
11)Sreesanth - four
I just gave you solid reasons for why i thought it was not a poor series for him. If you continue to insist he had a "very poor" series because you can...then i'll leave you to it. Carry on...It isn't a knee-jerk reaction at all, Rahul Dravid has been poor for quite sometime now. It wasn't an 'average' series for him - it was a very poor series.
Say no more...if i wanted to hear from an ass, i'd fart.Okay, he had a great series.
Indeed, i was not trying to play down Laxman's effort at all. I was merely pointing out the job Dravid did by playing all those balls at number 3. In a series were Steyn and Morkel were very effective with the new ball, and the supporting cast was not at all threatening, i would say that he played a role in the middle order having a good series in general. Tendulkar, Laxman, Dhoni et all performed well in this series, but they did have an unselfish helping hand from Dravid....judging from some of the comments here, it seems like Dravid was AWOL.Laxman didn't play one good innings kj, he played two. His 38 in the first dig of Durban was very important.