Angry young man!

If you score your 30th test ton (that's one more than the great don himself!) and it goes unnoticed, if you score your 12,000th test run (!!) and its not hyped up in the papers the next morning, if you have scored 10,000+ ODI runs but you don't feature in your country's ODI team (and even better,) if you don't feature in an ICC shortlist of 48 ODI players for picking the greatest ever ODI team, you cannot NOT be Rahul Dravid!

Harsha Bhogle rightly said...

"If Tendulkar's life is about enthusiasm, Dravid's is about determination. If Tendulkar is the child splashing color about with glee, Dravid is the scientist in a relentless search for progress. He might seem weighed down but that is his style and it is a style that has served him and his team handsomely for almost 15 years. Tendulkar might have been a Formula One driver or a striker in a goalmouth, Dravid would have been an Olympic shooter.

Twelve thousand runs is a colossal achievement. Very good players are respected for life for scoring half those. It is a reward for an unwavering work ethic, for a man who has never drifted from the path of perseverance and integrity, two rather unfashionable qualities in public life these days. By not recognizing the enormity of what Dravid has achieved, India has let itself down."

Tendulkar has always got the lion's share of credit and is always in the limelight. Rightly so, cause with his contribution to the game in the last three years, we can safely say he is the greatest ever batsman in modern day cricket. Twenty years of dominance and no shot in the book (or out of it) that he cannot perfectly play he would forever remain a benchmark for future cricketers to achieve. But when we are talking about contributions to results of bilateral test series, we can probably group him in level together with the Dravids and Laxmans. With cricket today only celebrating the IPL (or t20, or the shorter version) stars, we are just not doing justice to some of these great test players. VVS Laxman has however done himself heap loads of good with his mighty consistent dominance of Aussie bowling in the last decade which will always remain his trademark. But Dravid has just always missed out!

Without doubt the genius deserves to be given his credit, deserves more space in our print and electronic media, deserves an identity of his own and deserves a lot more celebration. Even though he lags Tendulkar by 10000+ international runs and whooping 53 international centuries, the long term contribution and impact created is certainly very much comparable. And not every generation has been gifted with a player like Dravid, his near-perfect technique, his determination to play for hours (and sometimes days!) continuously and his forever calmness to counter sledging. It is needless to mention the number of test matches drawn and won (esp. overseas) thanks to his mighty contribution with the bat. And with almost 200 catches in Test Cricket, Kumble, Bhajji and India owe him a great deal. And more importantly, by agreeing to keep wickets for quite a while when none of the keepers seemed to work for India he provided Ganguly's team room for an additional specialist, something which almost won them the 2003 WC. But sadly, rather than crediting him for this and for his contribution during the 1999 WC (viz. top run scorer) he will forever be remembered as the captain of the Indian team which fared the worst at a WC (2007).

I guess 'The Wall' never really demanded the spotlight, but to get overlooked by the cricketing fraternity is nothing but a shame for supporters, players, critics and us fans. Personally for me Dravid is a guide, a force and an inspiration! I will never forget the humble words after him scoring his 10,000th Test run ("I probably exceeded my own expectations in reaching 10,000. The image of Gavaskar raising his bat on scoring his 10,000th run in 1987 is still clear in my mind. I never thought I'd get this far when I began my test career in 1996."). To score 10,000 runs in both versions of the game after the heavy criticism (for his slow strike rate) he faced at the start of his career, he has since created abundant scope for inspiration.

His words at the post-match presentation after Indian crashed out of the 2007 WC in the first round ("If you were writing a fairytale, you wouldn't write it this way.") literally brought tears in my eyes. (I was at new DT and drunk, so please excuse!) I feared it would spoil his ODI career and so it did! He did not survive long after that. It also started a downfall in his test career. From being the fastest to reach 9000 runs he went on to become only the fourth fastest to 10,000 runs in test cricket (behind Lara, Tendulkar and Ponting).

Soon later during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2007-08, after the mighty controversial Sydney Test, India needed to deliver good and put on a good show. Dravid had had a quiet series till then. He had good starts which he could not create into big scores in both innings of the first test, and he had a very poor second test. But in the third one at the WACA, Perth (where CA, with amazing media hype, announced that they would launch Shaun Tait against the Indians), Dravid played a magnificent innings to score 93 and give India a solid start. It remained the highest score by a batsman in that test match (needless to say, India Won!) and personally is my most favorite Dravid test innings ever. Shaun Tait was wicket-less and had economies in excess of 4 (RPO) in both innings, and immediately announced his retirement from Test Cricket (Haha!!) :)

And later that year, during the first IPL, Dravid was heavily criticized with a few experts saying he would never click in the t20 version of the game. He then mentioned in a press conference that had he been in his early twenties, he'd crack the t20 version! He answered his critics with his bat, being the highest run scorer for RCB in that season (371 runs at an average of over 28 and a strike rate of almost 125! And the next highest Boucher with just 225 runs! Imagine!). I will never forget the one innings (for a lost cause) against RR, where he scored 75 of 36 balls (with 6 fours and 6 sixes!) and surely proved that he could adjust to the t20 style of play!

In 2010 he seems to be getting a little better with the runs, the Border-Gavaskar home trophy was a bad one for him, but after fighting it out against the Black Caps (being the second highest run scorer for India in the series) and with the innings of 191 (hasn't he always been known for such big innings!) he looks like he is getting back into the groove! I just hope he ends his international test career at a high.

As a mighty supporter of the Indian Test Team and Test Cricket itself, I can only hope India doesn't struggle too long finding a replacement for Dravid. For Test cricket to survive will always need players like him and if India are to show their strength as the Number 1 team in the world in the long term, we need a replacement soon and an efficient one, for Dravid is not too far away from his 38th birthday. Thanks to a career with minimal injuries and thanks to a 'Will-do-anything-for-Indian-Cricket' attitude in his 15 yr long career, he has probably been the most loyal and humble servant of Indian Cricket. If we find his replacement easily, Dravid will probably never get the due credit he deserves, and i fear only if we don't find that replacement, are we going to realize what he actually meant for Team India and why India was always going to be a strong opposition with him in there at that Number 3. Both ways, it is very unfortunate! I thus often find myself as the 'Angry young man', contending for the Nice guy who finished first, begging people to recognize his contribution before it gets too late! (We don't need a comparison with Tendulkar, cause Dravid himself says Tendulkar is an idol for him, I just need people to acknowledge his contribution to Indian Cricket.)

Hello people, hope you enjoyed reading my first ever blog, I am Sachin Kudva and as is obvious, a die-hard fan of my most admired idol, Rahul Dravid. Following him for all these years has taught me loads of lessons, every single of them guiding me to be a better person, or just be better at what I do, and that should be the reason he is my most admired idol! (And maybe also because his Kannada is very much like mine, even though both of us have forever been Bengaluru boys!) ;)

Cheers!!

(I'm glad my first ever web write-up is about Jammy, and would like to dedicate it to him! For all the entertainment provided with his bat in the last 15 years!)