King Kallis

To me, Kallis is the greatest cricketer that I have seen playing the game. Yes, greater than SRT or Lara. Sad I cannot see more of him on the field.

A lovely article on various facets of his personality.

The other side of a SRT-like success..

At one time, he was admired by Sachin Tendulkar himself. Now he is struggling to fight alcoholism! The emphasis that Sachin placed on a strong family system in his farewell speech is evident here.

Here is the story.

Accolades to the reporter Bharat Sundaresan for digging out this story. 

Memories of Sehwag

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/625814.html

The Tendulkar habit

Harsha Bhogle on Tendulkar after the latter's announcement to retire from ODI cricket.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/598770.html

Rahul Dravid – India's genius who could see way beyond the boundary

Rahul Dravid is congratulated by Steve Waugh following India's victory in Adelaide in December 2003. Photograph: Hamish Blair/Getty Images Sport
When most people talk, you wait for your turn to speak. With some, you listen. And with a select few, you hang on every word like it's a sermon from on high. For many cricket fans, Steve Waugh falls into the latter category. A combination of Waugh's laconic nature, his avoidance of the spotlight, his abhorrence of banality and his status as the inscrutable figurehead of the Australian team that ruled the world at the turn of the century have made his pronouncements as valuable as any in the game. He is certainly someone whose respect you would be desperate to earn. Muffled praise from Steve Waugh is worth 100 rooftop eulogies from other cricketers.

It's no surprise that Steve Waugh respected Rahul Dravid. He respected him so much that he asked him to write the foreword to his autobiography. Their mutual admiration was cemented over dinner during India's tour of Australia in 1998, when Dravid asked Waugh incessantly about the mental side of the game. They differ in some respects – Dravid's idea of mental disintegration was the watertight forward defensive – but they share crucial qualities. A love of the dying art of batting time. A rich understanding of the history of the game and particularly the importance of Test cricket. An awareness of how important cricket is but also how important it isn't. Both see way beyond the boundary.

In Dravid, Waugh saw a rare species: the truly worthy adversary, and somebody who prided himself of making the tough, important runs. Waugh wasn't in the gutter very often as Australian captain, yet he happily went there in Adelaide on 16 December 2003, to retrieve the ball after Dravid had hit the winning runs in a sensational second Test. It gave India their first victory in Australia for 23 years. Waugh collected the ball and gave it to Dravid. With this being Waugh's last series in international cricket, some saw it as a symbolic passing of the baton. "Rahul wanted the extra edge that would elevate his game to the next level," said Waugh of that dinner date in 1998, "and at the Adelaide Oval he completed the journey".

That performance was probably Dravid's finest in international cricket. He made 233 and 72 not out, batting five minutes short of 14 hours in the match. After that, even this most modest man could not avoid the spotlight. Despite that, and other legendary match-winning performances, there is a temptation to think Dravid as the guy behind the guy, someone whose career was largely spent in the shadows. When he made a gritty 95 on his Test debut at Lord's in 1996, Sourav Ganguly, also on debut, made a sparkling 131. When he batted all day against Australia at Kolkata in 2001, eventually making 180, VVS Laxman also batted all day and made a divine 281, one of the all-time great Test innings. When Dravid struck three unyielding centuries in England last summer, they were lost in Sachin Tendulkar's pursuit of his 100th hundred. Though Dravid was technically beautiful, his often weary face betrayed the fact that batting rarely came easy to him. He did not have the brutal audacity of Virender Sehwag, the poetic elegance of Laxman, the unfathomable, enduring genius of Tendulkar or the sublime cover drive of Ganguly.

What he did have was substance. Dravid will retire with a portfolio of epic innings. Most came abroad; his percentage of Test centuries scored overseas (58) and outside Asia (39) are higher than the other fourgalacticos. This point might seem piddling – runs are runs are runs – but it ignores the position India were in during the early part of Dravid's career. Between 1986 and 2000 they won just one overseas Test in 48 attempts. To say they were travel sick was an insult to spinning stomachs. Their journey under the flinty captaincy of Ganguly in the early 2000s will always be defined by that miraculous turnaround against Australia in 2000-01, yet the most striking progress came overseas. Dravid, who averaged a staggering 102.84 in victories under Ganguly, was the key to that progress. His performance of Adelaide was followed, later the same winter, by an immense 270 at Rawalpindi to set up India's first ever series win in Pakistan. Eighteen months earlier his masterful 148 in trying conditions at Headingley – the second of four consecutive Test hundreds – led to a first win in England for 16 years. In 2006, as captain, he made 81 and 68 in a low-scoring dogfight in Jamaica to give India their first series win in the Caribbean for 35 years. Dravid batted 597 minutes in the match; nobody else on either side lasted 205 minutes.

All bar one of these performances came during Dravid's peak, between July 2002 and June 2006 – the month in which his overall Test average peaked at 58.75. In that period, he scored 4316 runs at 69.61; even many of Tendulkar's disciples could not deny that Dravid was India's best batsman, and by a distance. Only Ricky Ponting rivalled him as the world's best. Dravid was also the inaugural ICC Player of the Year in 2004.

He lies second behind on the Tendulkar on the Test run-scorers list, with 13288, and fourth with 36 Test centuries. He does have a couple of records of his own. Dravid is the only man to score 10,000 runs in the pivotal No3 position, and the only man to face 30,000 deliveries in Test cricket. As Dileep Premachandran said, he had "powers of concentration that were almost yogic". He was a master of the dying art of batting time and was famously nicknamed The Wall (although, as Mike Selvey pointed out on these pages, he deserved a grander title like The Great Wall of Indore).

To talk of Dravid's ability tells only half the story. He exhibited greatness at its most humble, and is one of the most impressive men to play the game: dignified, fair-minded, eloquent (he never used a ghostwriter), gentle, yet tougher than we will ever realise. A Gary Cooper for the new millennium; the kind of man you'd want your son to grow into. Those who advocate Satan for a living would struggle to produce a bad word against him. There was one charge of ball-tampering in 2004, although most seemed to accept it was accidental. That's about it. Ganguly observed that Dravid had the eerie habit of almost always saying the right thing. He pretty much always did the right thing, too. Both were demonstrated at Edgbaston last summer when he defused the row over Ian Bell's controversial dismissal.

Dravid was also a strikingly selfless team man, and could pop up in the most unlikely places: he batted everywhere from No1 to 7 in the Test team and played 73 one-day internationals as wicketkeeper to aid the balance of the side. He could pop up in other unlikely places: playing for Scotland, or at the United Services Ground in Portsmouth, repelling Shane Warne in one of county cricket's greatest modern duels. He even appeared in the England dressing-room in 2002 to pick Michael Vaughan's brain after he had dismantled India's spinners. Imagine an Indian asking an Englishman for tips on playing spin bowling. Dravid was never too proud to seek advice. "Greatness was not handed to him; he pursued it diligently, single-mindedly," Dravid wrote of Waugh in that foreword. It's a compliment that works both ways. Waugh recognised Dravid as a rare species, and so should we: as somebody who achieved greatness as both a cricketer and as a human being.

- The Guardian (UK)

Was Rahul Dravid better than Sachin Tendulkar?

No, but he was more beloved in England

I saw Rahul Dravid get his 12 at The Oval, in 2007. It took 96 balls and lasted 140 painful, horrible, scratchy minutes.


In its sheer bloody-minded refusal to admit defeat or give in to his own lack of timing and form, it was a masterpiece; a sight both grim to behold and ghoulishly compelling, like watching Darren Gough in a pink leotard on that Wipeout gameshow.

A lesser man would have just thrown the bat at a wide one and nicked off to lick his wounds and wait for better days to come. But Rahul kept at it, mistiming and clunking and missing and edging. For over two hours. It was, in its own way, brave and inspiring. He stuck it out until the bitter end, when he was finally dismissed – in an exquisite little eff-you from the universe – by Paul Collingwood.

I’d gone to the match with a friend, who had not been to a Test match before but had got free posh seats from his work. I think my friend’s previous exposure to cricket constituted of highlights of Freddie’s Ashes, and maybe a corporate jolly to a Twenty20. It would be like preparing to join the Foreign Legion by going to Club 18-30 in Faliraki. Perhaps nothing could have readied the neophyte watcher for the prospect of Rahul’s 96-ball 12, but it’s fair to say that my mate hasn’t been near a cricket match since.

I felt at the time that Test cricket at The Oval would somehow stagger on without my friend’s interest or patronage, and sure enough, Rahul was back at that ground in 2011, promoted to open and scoring a magnificent unbeaten hundred in the first innings. He barely had time to change Suresh Raina’s nappy before trudging out to open the innings again, following on.

Rahul had to move up the order in both digs. Gautam Gambhir, one of several of the younger Indian cricketers whose reputation in England will never recover from that spineless, flabby, cowardly display on that tour, had hurt his head trying (and, naturally, failing) to take a catch and wasn’t up to batting before either innings was effectively over. Poor lamb. Even when Dravid was handed a tough decision for a bat-pad catch and given out, unluckily, for 13 in the second innings, he took it on the chin. He was a man amongst boys on that tour.

So two matches at The Oval that, I submit, encapsulate what Rahul has meant to English cricket lovers. While Sachin – perhaps distracted by the hoopla over breaking a record that nobody even knew existed until it was created for him, bespoke – floundered on that 2011 tour, Rahul’s reputation grew even greater in this country.

It is hard, sacrilegious I dare say, for Indian fans to consider, but I believe that in the UK at least, Rahul’s bravery, modesty, professionalism and courtly determination make him even more loved than Tendulkar. There is, to us non-fanatics, a machine-like efficiency to the run-compiling machine from Mumbai that makes him somehow less of a romantic figure than Rahul and, for that matter, VVS.

While Sachin and his lesser successors are bathed in the fierce gleam of the modern India, Rahul’s greatest moments seem to be shrouded in a dimming light, like the form of the game to which he was best suited. If it is to be retirement, he will be cherished in the hearts of English Test cricket fans for a very long time. Let's just hope he doesn't take Indian Test cricket with him.

- By Alan Tyers (The Telegraph, UK)

Rahul Dravid - The Warrior

This is a personal favorite b'coz Steve Waugh & Rahul Dravid have been two of the most inspirational heroes for me.

Long before the first ball was bowled in the World Cup in southern Africa in 2003, long before fans began dreaming of an impossible Indian revival which soon became a glorious reality, this writer was sure of one thing: once the skirmishes began, he was going to miss somebody hugely.

Watching cricket's most celebrated event without Steve Waugh was a bit like going to Wimbledon and finding out that Pete Sampras had not turned up, a bit like watching Godfather without Marlon Brando, a little like going to an art exhibition featuring the masterpieces of the 20th century and finding out that Picasso was missing.

That's a very personal observation, of course.

Like sages and saints, sports fans live in the now. Yesterday's men — however great, however heroic, however successful — may as well have been 19th century men.

Yet, to me, the pain lingered for some time; it lingered until the balm arrived. And it arrived in the form of one Mr. Rahul Dravid. The same gladiatorial intensity and monkish one-pointedness of purpose; the same glint in the eyes, the eyes of a born warrior marooned in the belly of the Sahara desert with less than a day's ration left; the same strength of will that propelled Steve Waugh to heroic heights.

Dravid had it all it; if anybody in cricket's post-Steve Waugh era could more than match to the Aussie master, it was the upstanding gentleman from Bangalore.

Of course, we have showered clichés on him. The Wall. Mr. Reliable. Dependable Dravid. Sheet anchor. As if these things explain everything. Actually, none of these do justice to the special skills of a very special man. Dravid has been the architect of Indian cricket. He made the blueprints, he envisioned the pillars. He was a brick by brick man who stayed to see the edifice completed. Then the interior decorators arrived with their fancy fittings and we were in awe of their minor art, the great craftsman and his rare craft already forgotten.

As much as it has suited Indian cricket, as much as it has helped the team climb great heights, from another standpoint, it's a pity that Dravid should have happened in the Sachin Tendulkar era. He would have stood out as the best in any other, barring perhaps the one that featured Sunil Gavaskar.

AMONG THE BEST THREE
In my mind, both in terms of technique and success, he is among the three best batsmen in the history of Indian cricket, behind only Tendulkar and Gavaskar, according to some experts, although I am not too sure about the ranking order.

And like Ponsford in the Don Bradman era, like Gundappa Visvanath in the days of Gavaskar, like Gordon Greenidge in the halcyon days of Viv Richards, Dravid soldiered on in the giant shadow of the Sachin, leaving his stamp time and again nevertheless.

Hey, Rahul, here's the 'keeper's gloves. Hey, Rahul, will you open the innings today? But, no, Rahul, wait a minute ... maybe you can bat at No. 4. Hey, hold it. What about No. 6? No other player as good as Dravid has ever been “used”' with such cruel disregard for the man's self-respect in the entire history of Indian cricket. But these things hardly mattered to him. For, Dravid was the ultimate team-man in a very selfish sport and in the most selfish era in the history of professional sport.

Of course, he has millions of fans in this country; and many of them are his fans for probably the wrong reasons. He is cute. He has a great smile. He is a fine gentleman. That's like admiring Dravid for all the reasons that you might want to appreciate Shilpa Shetty's glamorous presence at an IPL match!

WARRIOR
But let's get this right now. The man's a marvel because he was, like my great hero Steve Waugh, a warrior. The Indian team uniform was his battle fatigues. The bat was both his sword and his shield, more often the latter. He was not a creator/destroyer in the Tendulkar-Richards mould. He could never be that. Dravid did not have their outrageous genius. He was more Boycott than Bradman but without the selfishness of the English opener.

Most of all, he was a brave warrior, a man of character, someone you'd want to have with you when your house was on fire or when floodwaters threatened to submerge your living room; or, to be precise, when India was four down for 29 with Dale Steyn or James Anderson on fire.

What a man! Tenacity, courage, resourcefulness, selflessness and the willingness to sacrifice for the team's sake…the man had everything. Altruism is vanishingly rare in sport. But Dravid was a natural-born altruist.

Even in the brutal, gladiatorial era of modern sport, there are times when beauty can smother meaning. Watch a believe-it-or-not balletic forehand from Federer, watch a nonchalant straight drive from Tendulkar off the fastest of bowlers, and Dravid's brilliance might seem to fade into the background.

But in a landmine strewn area that must be carefully ventured into, it is Dravid's clear-eyed engagement with difficult circumstances that has quite often helped Team India overcome hurdle after hurdle.

Forget hyperbolic excesses. Dravid will be missed more than any other Indian Test cricketer.

- By Nirmal Shekar - The Hindu (Adapted from a column written during the 2003 World Cup in South Africa)

My husband, the perfectionist

Vijeeta Dravid on her husband - Source: espncrininfo (thanks Vishal for bringing this piece to my notice)

I've been married to Rahul for almost nine years now and we have always been very private people. So I'm sure he will be astonished to find that I have written at length about him.

This is not meant to be a song of praise for him on his retirement; that is up to the rest of the world. I am his wife, not a fan, and the reason I am writing this is to give you an insight into the role cricket has played in his life, and to take that in for myself at the end of his 16-year international career.

Just after we got married, I remember him saying to me that he hoped to play for "the next three or four years", and that he would need me there to support him in that time. Now that he has retired, I think: "Not bad. We've done far better than the three or four years we thought about in May 2003."

The last 12 months were special for us for more reasons than the runs or centuries Rahul has scored. After the 2010-11 tour of South Africa, our older son, Samit, suddenly developed a huge interest in cricket. When he watched Rahul score his centuries in England last year, it was as if in the last year of his career, Rahul had found his best audience.

I was with the boys at Old Trafford when Rahul played his first (and last) Twenty20 international and then also travelled to every match of the one-day series. After the last ODI, we went into the Lord's dressing room and showed Samit and Anvay theirbaba's name on the honours board. It was a huge thrill for the boys to see Rahul play live in front of so many people, to see him at his "work", which kept him away from them for months.

Cricket has been the centre of Rahul's world and his approach to every season and series has been consistent in all the time we have been married. Methodical, thoughtful and very, very organised. When I travelled with him for the first time, in Australia in 2003-04, I began to notice how he would prepare for games - the importance of routines, and his obsession with shadow practice at odd hours of day or night. I found that weird. Once, I actually thought he was sleepwalking!

Now I know that with Rahul's cricket, nothing is casual, unconscious or accidental. Before he went on tour, I would pack all his other bags, but his cricket kit was sacred - I did not touch it; only he handled it. I know if I packed only two sets of informal clothes, he would rotate them through an entire tour if he had to and not think about it. He has used one type of moisturising cream for 20 years because his skin gets dry. Nothing else. He doesn't care for gadgets, and barely registers brands - of watches, cologne or cars. But if the weight of his bat was off by a gram, he would notice it in an instant and get the problem fixed.

Cricket has been his priority and everyone around him knows that. On match days Rahul wanted his space and his silence. He didn't like being rushed, not for the bus, not to the crease. All he said he needed was ten minutes to himself, to get what I call his "internal milieu" settled, before he could go about a match day.

When we began to travel with the kids - and he loved having them around during a series, even when they were babies - we made sure we got two rooms. The day before every game, the boys were told that their father had to be left alone for a while, and Rahul would go into his room for his meditation and visualisation exercises. On the morning of the game, he would get up and do another session of meditation before leaving for the ground. I have tried meditation myself and I know that the zone he gets into as quickly as he does - it takes lots of years of training to get there. It is part of the complete equilibrium he tries to achieve before getting into a series.

Like all players, Rahul has his superstitions. He doesn't try a new bat out for a series, and puts his right thigh pad on first. Last year before the Lord's Test, he made sure to sit in the same space Tillakaratne Dilshan had occupied in the visitors' dressing room when he scored nearly a double-hundred earlier in the season. Rahul scored his first hundred at Lord's in that game.

If I packed only two sets of informal clothes, he would rotate them through an entire tour if he had to and not think about it. He doesn't care for gadgets, and barely registers brands - of watches, cologne or cars. But if the weight of his bat was off by a gram, he would notice it in an instant and get the problem fixed

Once the game is on, at the end of every day he has this fantastic ability to switch off. He may be thinking about it, his batting may bother him, he will be itching to go back and try again, but he can compartmentalise his life very well. He won't order room service or brood indoors, he would rather go out, find something to do - go to a movie or watch a musical, which he loves. He will walk out to the sea to wind down or go to bookstores, or find something else to do.

He has dealt with all that goes on in cricket because he can separate the game and the rest of his life and put things in perspective. No matter what was happening in his cricket, at home he is husband, father, family man. He has never said, "Oh I've had a bad day." He wouldn't speak about his work unless asked. Other than dropped catches.

Only once, I remember, he returned from a Test and said, "I got a bit angry today. I lost my temper. Shouldn't have done that." He wouldn't say more. Many months later, Viru [Sehwag] told me that he'd actually thrown a chair after a defeat to England in Mumbai. He'd thrown the chair, Viru said, not because the team had lost but because they had lost very badly.

One of Rahul's great strengths is his ability - and he has had it all along - to accept reality. He believes you cannot complain about anything because there is no end to complaining. And he knows there is no end to improving either. He always looks within, to gain, to learn and to keep working at his cricket.

In the last few years he worked doubly hard to make sure he played the game in his best physical condition in the toughest phase of his career physically. He tried to understand his body and work on his limitations - he was able to hold off shoulder surgery despite a problem in his rotator cuff because he found ways to keep it strong. When I was pregnant with Samit, we spent two months in South Africa to work in a sports centre that focused on strengthening Rahul's shoulder. Because he sweats profusely, he has even had sweat analysis done, to see how that affects his batting. He found that Pat Rafter, the former Australian tennis player, had a similar problem.

To get fit, he went on very difficult protein diets for three months at a stretch, giving up rice, chapatis and dessert altogether - even though he has a sweet tooth. He wanted his batting and his cricket to benefit from his peak fitness, even heading into his late 30s. He has been to see a specialist in eye co-ordination techniques, for eye exercises for the muscles of his eyes. If there was a problem, he always tried to find answers.

Outside cricket, Rahul is a man of no fuss. If he's on a diet, he will eat whatever is served, as long as it fits the diet. Even if the same food keeps turning up on his plate for days in a row, he will eat it without complaint. If he drops a catch, though, it bothers him enough to talk about it on the phone when we speak in the evening; during matches, it is the only part of cricket that he will talk about without me asking him about it. In 2009 he lost his old, faded India cap, when it was stolen from a ground. He was very, very upset about it. It was dear to him and he was extremely proud to wear it.

People always ask me the reason for Rahul being a "normal" person, despite the fame and the celebrity circus. I think it all began with his middle-class upbringing, of being taught to believe in fundamental values like humility and perspective. He has also had some very old, solid friendships that have kept him rooted.

He is fond of reading, as many know, and has a great sense of and interest in history of all kinds - of the game he plays and also of the lives of some of the world's greatest men. When he started his cricket career, he had a coach, Keki Tarapore, who probably taught him to be a good human being along with being a good cricketer.

All of this has given Rahul a deep understanding of what exactly was important about his being in cricket and what was not. It can only come from a real love for the game. When I began to understand the kind of politics there are in the game, he only said one thing: that this game has given me so much in life that I will never be bitter. There is so much to be thankful for, no matter what else happens, that never goes away.

Cricket has made Rahul who he is, and I can say that he was able to get the absolute maximum out of his abilities as an international cricketer.

What next for him? I know he likes his routine and he's in a good zone when he is in his routine, so we will have to create one at home for him. Getting the groceries could be part of that. A cup of tea in the morning for his wife would be a lovely bonus, I would think, particularly now that he doesn't have to take off for the gym or for training at the KSCA at the crack of dawn.

More seriously, though, I think he will spend time relaxing and reading to let it all sink in a bit. He has loved music and wants to learn how to play the guitar. Then perhaps he would like to find something that fills in at least some of the place that cricket occupied in his life, something challenging and cerebral.

Rahul has lived his dream and he thinks it's time to move on. Retirement will mean a big shift in his life, of not have training or team-mates around him, or the chance to compete against the best. The family, though, is delighted to have him back.

More on Dravid...

... this time from a blog I love to read (www.greatbong.net)

If Sachin was the teacher’s pet marked for greatness ever since he joined the school, Ganguly the arrogant gang-leader of the cool kids and VVS Laxman the freakishly-talented loner in the corner, Rahul Dravid will always be the hair-cleanly-parted, diligent “good boy”, the one who studies every waking hour to get the best grade.

The perfect student.

Not for him the arrogance of knowledge. Nor the satisfaction of absolute success. Dravid was always learning, and as one of the first ads he shot for so prophetically said, “always practicing”.

Not naturally aggressive in his batting, one of his most inspirational achievements was how he developed his limited-overs technique to retire with a record as good as the best. And even while batting in Test matches, an art he had mastered better than any of his contemporaries, you could see him continually changing, adapting, fine-tuning his game, often shaking his head in disappointment even after a perfect cover-drive. It is this relentless, almost religious, pursuit of perfection that will be remembered the most about him.

As also the precise movement of feet, the opening of the stance to counter the swing, the pivot of the heel, the last-minute leave, the perfect balance of the body at the moment of impact, the stillness of head. The man was as close to an anthropomorphism of a Swiss watch one could get, not just in its engineering precision, but in its total reliability. Session after session, like gears of platinum, he would grind out the opposition, his almost absolute invulnerability sapping them of all hope .

Time could stop. But not Dravid.

The other guy would trudge to the pavilion. Not Dravid.

He would be at the other end. Always.

However even “always” ends. It has to.

The bails are removed. Shadows creep over the pitch. The reassuring presence at number 3 takes his last walk.

Memories crowd around. Calcutta. Adelaide. Lords. Georgetown. Headingley. Rawalpindi. Now they are all a blur–one glorious image giving way to another in rapid sequence. The flick. The square-drive. That back-lift. The studious expression. The self-effacing smile. The punch in the air.

And that silently smoldering hunger—– the hunger to be the best one can possibly be.

We will miss you sir.

Harsha Bhogle on Rahul Dravid's international cricket career

Open letter to Rahul Dravid

A faithful follower wishes the legend goodbye - Written by Sidvee (Source: Yahoo)

Dear Rahul,

This is not going to be easy. But I will try. One sentence at a time.

Congratulations. Is that appropriate? That’s what people at work say when someone quits. And, despite the anguish surrounding your decision, this is supposed to be a happy day. At least I would like to think of it that way.

I expected you to finish in Adelaide. The same Adelaide where, in 2003, you found gold at the end of the rainbow. The same Adelaide where another colossus, Adam Gilchrist, retired four years ago, his wife and children sitting among the press, his voice breaking towards the end of each sentence, tears trickling down his cheeks as the press conference wound down.

But the Chinnaswamy Stadium fits well. That’s where it all began. And that’s where it ends. Like Gilly, you leave with your family and former team-mates watching over your retirement announcement. And like him, you leave amid breaking voices and teary eyes.

There is a constant temptation, especially when a cricketer retires, to draw comparisons. We live in a world that loves definitives. It frowns upon ambiguity. We want to determine your exact location in the pantheon. I will refrain from this. I am sure you are tired of being compared to other great Indian batsmen. And I am not about to bore you.

But I must tell you something that has bothered me for a long time. You are too conveniently slotted as a specialist batsman. I disagree. That’s too simplistic. For me, you are an allrounder - not in the way our limited imaginations defines an allrounder but in a broader, more sweeping, sense.

I find it hard to think of a more versatile cricketer. You were one of our finest short leg fielders. You were, for the most part, a remarkable slip catcher. You have opened the innings, batted at No.3, batted at No.6 (from where you conjured up that 180 in Kolkata). I’m sure you have batted everywhere else.

You have kept wicket, offering an added dimension to the one-day side in two World Cups. You even scored 145 in one of those games. You captained both the Test and one-day teams. Sure things didn’t go according to plan but you were a superb on-field captain. More importantly you were India’s finest vice-captain, an aspect that is often conveniently forgotten. Jeez, you even took some wickets.

There’s something unique about this. In Indian cricket’s hall of fame, you can proudly share a table with Gavaskar and Tendulkar. But you can also share one with Kapil, Mankad and Ganguly - cricketers who excelled in more than one aspect of their game for an extended period of time.

The only people who will understand this are those who you played with. The only people who will begin to appreciate your value to the side are those who you propped up. Which is why it is not the least surprising when Tendulkar said yesterday, ‘There can be no cricketer like Rahul Dravid.’ Hell yeah. It’s too far-fetched.

Talking about Tendulkar, you know my best moment involving you two? Adelaide again. 2003 again. Damien Martyn c Dravid b Tendulkar 38. Ripping legbreak, spanking cut, screaming edge, lunging right hand, gotcha. That was magic. Pure magic. Swung the game. Ignited the series.

What else will I remember? Hmm. That shirt of yours immaculately tucked in. How did you manage to keep it tucked in every single time? I’ll remember the way you chased the ball to the boundary line, as if you were competing in a hundred-meter race. I’ll remember the intensity with which you studied the pitch before the game, like a geologist, scraping the surface with your palms, examining the grains of sand, gauging the direction of the breeze. You loved all these tiny details, didn’t you?

There is a general perception that you have not got the credit you deserve. I don’t know if that is accurate. I wonder if you feel that way. But just you wait. Wait for India to play a Test without you. Wait for the team to lose an early wicket, especially on a challenging pitch. You’ll hear a gazillion sighs, sighs filled with longing. India 8 for 1 and you sitting in his living room, sipping tea and watching TV. I’ll be surprised if you don’t palpably feel a nation’s collective yearning for a sunnier, glorious past.

But even that I may be able to somehow handle. What I won’t be able to come to terms with is not watching you bat. Over the years few things have given me as much joy as watching you construct an innings, hour upon hour, brick upon brick.

Here I must mention what the great American author, Edgar Allan Poe, once said about the importance of punctuation.

It does not seem to be known that, even where the sense is perfectly clear, a sentence may be deprived of half its force - its spirit - its point - by improper punctuation.

An innings of yours would be incomplete without the punctuation marks that you masterfully employed along the way: the focussed leaves, the immaculate dead-bats, the softening of the grip, the late strokeplay, the ducking, the weaving, the swaying, the head totally still, your eyes always on the ball, the focus, more focus, still more focus, even more focus.

There is no point watching an innings of yours stripped of all this. I’ve cursed all these TV producers who create highlight packages with fours, sixes, your raised bat after each fifty, a jump after a hundred, more fours, more sixes and done. Finished. Poof. That’s supposed to be a summation of your innings.

It’s the same with all these photographers who click away and the websites that use those photos to create galleries. None of them even begin to portray the painstaking manner in which you create these pearls. None of them can capture over after over of graft. There is nothing more exhilarating that being exhausted after watching you bat. But there is no technology that can capture that, no software that can simulate it.

So if my grandson were to ask me about your batting, I would be lost. The only way anyone can begin to understand your craft is by watching you bat through a whole day, by experiencing your pain. There are no short cuts.

There are a million links that pop up on YouTube when I type ‘Rahul Dravid’. All of them show you batting. None of them contain your essence. There is no Rahul Dravid in there.

That’s sad. But maybe that’s also a good thing. I was fortunate to be able to watch you bat. My grandson won’t be as lucky. He’s just going to be born at the wrong time. Let’s go with that. It’s much easier.

As I said, this is supposed to be a happy day. It’s the memories that matter. You’ve left us a world full of them.

So long, Rahul. Adios. Ciao. Auf Wiedersehen. Tata. Bye. Bye. Olleyadagali guru.

And thank you. It’s been a privilege.

Yours faithfully,
Sidvee

My two cents on Indian test side

I was disappointed with the way we lost the two tests against England. I happened to talk about it in a lecture and was invited to comment on a student's comment on FB. So posted this.

Firstly, these couple of defeats per se would have been okay, but the way we lost, I felt, was spineless. There was no fight whatsoever. They did not just win, they out-played us completely. Sure every team can lose a couple of games in a row, but the 'how' is equally important.

Secondly, what is our future looking like? Sure we are statistically at No. 1, but how strong is our side! Be it pace bowling, spin or batting, the bench strength looks very raw. Who is going to replace the likes of Sachin, Dravid and Laxman? If we do not find the answers soon, we will go the Aussie way. Difference being, they cleanly dominated other teams for more than a decade and we would struggle to do it for a couple of years. Even today, India does not look dominating or powerful enough to claim the tag of world-beaters. What has been equally important is that other teams have not been very impressive except England and SAF.

Thirdly, I am tempted to look at the statistics of test matches during the last three years. India has played 33, won 15, lost 6. Out of 15 wins, 6 have been overseas. 2 in Bangladesh, 1 each in NZ, SAF, SL and WI. Out of these NZ, Bang, WI clearly not the benchmarks for us. So it is 2 'real' away test wins. 2 away wins out of 15 wins.

The SAF test win at Durban was a horrible pitch. In a way, spinner friendly Indian track. Dhoni mentioned about it in the post-match conference that the pitch was not of international standards. It was an uneven bounce/spin track and Harbhajan made a killing. The win against SL in Colombo was a Sehwag feast. His better than run-a-ball century won it for us.

Sehwag has been a key for us in the last couple of years. Sans him, we saw what can happen to our batting line up. His blazing start was vital for middle order batsmen to come in and capitalize. I am not sure how a world-beater side is so heavily dependant on 1 batsman. Perhaps pretty much like Hayden for Aussies, but look at the way other batsmen played for them when they were No. 1. There were matches that Gilchrist, Langer or Ponting won for them.

Coming to qualitative factors, Indians on the field looked spineless and lethargic even in Windies. We did not go for the win in the last test against WI!! That is not the sign of a champion. Windies are surely not the most formidable. We gave it up there.

Sure, statistically we are No. 1, and we could even retain it by winning/drawing the next two tests. But I am not going by the ranking. Even a WC victory was not convincing for me (personally) that we are the best. I want to see fear in the opponents when they face our bowlers and their bowlers should be left with shivers when we bat. Only Sehwag has managed that. I want to see our team kill others and win some games so one-sided that opponents must be in awe. Windies did it in 70s and 80s, Auusies in 90s and the last decade. We are not yet there. Sure we may some day, but not yet.

The IPL thread - Irritating PL

Two things gets on to my skin a lot when I watch the IPL Television telecast. Firstly, DC playing akin to the Indian national side during late 1990s under Azhar - without a bite and ever looking to be fine with losing. Secondly, the MRF blimp, and references to Lillee and MRF pace foundation and the bowlers who came from there and their grand mothers and the man who fills the big balloon up. It irritates me so much that every time they show the balloon now, I mute my TV set!

Damn irritating.

The IPL thread

I love cricket. I love IPL - the concept, the conduct and the clink. Like the last two seasons, I have been closely following this third edition too. The matches till now has been superb and the quality of cricket on display in most matches are top-class. If there were doubters of whether cricketers would play whole-heartedtly for a franchise based format, they can now go and have a cup of tea because the format clearly works fabulously well.

It needs either a fool or a brave-heart to be able to put money on who will go on to win the tournament. For, firstly the format of the game is such that it is absolutely unpredictable and secondly (and more importantly), there is a long way left to go. Having said that, my money is on the Deccan Chargers and I hope they win this time too. Will they? We will wait and see. Can they? Surely, absolutely.

RCB, MI and DC are looking very good at this stage. Yet, the match of the season till date came in the form of a tied-followed-by-super-over match between KXIP and CSK. It was an important match, not just for the entertainment value but for the way KXIP won the match from almost being nowhere. That result will shower a lot of belief on many teams who might find themselves is a similar situation in the matches to come.

Interestingly, the mainstays of most teams have not been the high-ego-high-reputation youngsters, but their sober, senior team mates. Be it a Gilchrist/Symmo for DC or a Tendulkar/Sanath for MI or a Hayden/Murali for CSK. I am not taking away anything from the yonger lot but we will do well if we do not take anything away from the older lot too. Look at Kumble's accuracy in delivering bowls or the catches being plucked out of thin air by Dravid/Ganguly or the crisp textbook shots played by Kallis, and you will realize that they might be still calling the shots in T20 like they have in the more beautiful Test match cricket.

The beauty of the IPL lies in the lack of loyalties to a country/state/language. So when a Southie in Karthik leads DD against a Northie in Raina doing the job for CSK, the regional bias gets thrown out of the window. It is amazing how cricket cleans up the stains of regional politics. For, it is very plausible that Mumbai wins the league due to the talent of a Dhawan or Tiwary. Will some regional politicians suggest Sachin not to accept the trophy?

The pleasure of seeing Kumble bowl to Hayden with Boucher keeping wickets - three stalwarts from three different countries - is beyond words. It emphasizes the passion they bring in to play the game they love. How many of us manage to do that in our lives? I am truly jealous of them. Many say they play for money. Anyone who understands the intensity of cricket being played in IPL can only laugh at such observations. Money can be a motivator but cannot be the foundationstone for what Tendulkar does with the bat.

How can I not talk of the Mongoose bat! It looks weird to see Hayden holding something that looks more like an axe than a bat. But then, it is apparently effective. Symmo, like Hayden, is also a user of that bat. Would love to see what the monster can do with the mongoose.

My sense is that in insipid tracks of India, bowlers can not be the ones who decide the outcome of the game. And so, the quality of batting will decide the winner. Team with the best bat would go on to win the league. On their day, any line-up can do that as Dravid rightly answered to a Harsha Bhogle question after one of the matches. Peaking at the right time holds the key. Or else it will be like what DD experienced the last two times. Will they be third time lucky? Lot of people do think so. I am not one of them though. As I said earlier, we will wait and see.

So, here's to IPL and here's to awesome display of cricketing talent. Looking forward to more moments of brilliance. May the best team win (and may DC be that team!)

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar

I have been wanting to write on this phenomenon named Sachin, but somehow could never match my words to his feats. While browsing today, read this well-written paragraph by TIME magazine on what Sachin has been:

When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.

When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy.

It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will.

The moment captured

Love it :-)

Deccan has charged.. over to India now

After a disappointing campaign last year, Deccan Chargers have rightly demonstrated that their league standing of number 8 last year was an abberation rather than a reflection of the team's potential. This time, Adam 'Gilly' Gilchrist has led a good team to a good victory. All credit to Bangalore Challengers for making the final a great event. In retrospect, losing the toss and being put into bat was first was a blessing in disguise. The pressure while chasing even a par score could lead to choking, as did occur. The Chargers had already messed up a couple of chases during the league stages. It was a great game of cricket and at the end of the day, the game surely won. The only thing I regret is the verbal assault that Symonds was resorting to on the opponents, especially the young Manish Pandey. It was unwanted and I am not very sure whether Gilly would be happy of his team mate for that. Cricket must be played with a strong mind and not a sharp tongue. I have always disliked many Australian cricketers for sledging and Symmo surely is one of them.

Overall, happy that the team won. In a way, I am glad Gilly did not contribute with the bat last night. It required the combined efforts of Gibbs, Symonds, Rohit Sharma, R P Singh, Ojha and Harmeet Singh to win the match for the team. It leaves the critics without a point to attack that it was Gilly winning the series and not the Chargers. As a closing note, it was evident that the calmer heads on the field won the game. A look at RP Singh and Harmeet Singh carrying on with their overs with smiles and a sense of calm was re-assuring, for they are the future of Indian cricket.

Now, the focus must shift to the T20 world cup. A different series, surely more challenging and important. Over to MSD to try and repeat the performance of the last edition. After all, we are the defending world champions! The expectations are higher and so is the belief on the team for their potential to defend the world cup. India is going with a highly talented/able team. The probable playing XI might look like this:

1. Sehwag
2. Gambhir
3. Rohit Sharma (Raina as an option)
4. Yuvraj Singh (again, Raina as an option)
5. MS Dhoni
6. Yusuf Pathan (could sit out if Raina, Rohit and Yuvraj plays)
7. Irfan Pathan (could justify a place over Praveen Kumar for his batting prowess)
8. Harbhajan Singh (left-arm Ojha in the bench could be a good motivation for the offie)
9. Zaheer Khan
10. RP Singh
11. Ishant Sharma

There are a lot of options with both ball and bat for MSD. The team surely has it in them to go all the way. I guess the roadblock for the talented players could be themselves. The forms of Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, MSD and Yusuf Pathan looks uneven. At least three of them should hit their purple patch to get the job done. Also, by having 4 bowlers only in the team, MSD could go with 7 batsmen since Sehwag, Raina, Yuvraj, Rohit Sharma and Yusuf can all bowl.

With 12 teams in the tournament divided into 4 groups for the first phase of the tournament starting on June 5 in England, India is placed in Group A with Bangladesh and Ireland. This is the easiest group India could have wished for. Other groups are: B - England, Pakistan & Holland; C - Australia, Sri Lanka & West Indies (the toughest draw); D - South Africa, New Zealand & Scotland.

So now, awaiting the next euphoria sarting next month. Let the play begin!

Of this and that

Exciting times are coming ahead of us over the next couple of months. Elections 09 and IPL 2.0! Most news these days surrounds the two mega-events. Rightly so. As they say, it cannot get bigger than this perhaps.

Elections 2009 is one of the most closely watched national elections ever. After 26/11, the young, restless, forward-looking India wants change. It is so very evident with the kind of pro-voting stunts that we are witnessing for few weeks now. In Mumbai, going by a recent news report, the voter registrations have touched an all-time high. If not anything, it means there is a desire to see things change for the better. Also, we are seeing an interesting mix of candidates venturing out to stand in the polls. Shashi Tharoor, Capt. Gopinath, Mallika Sarabhai, Meera Sanyal to name a few. Fresh minds, thoughts and ideas are surely welcome. Will they be able to win their respective seats? Not sure. Tharoor might, for he is fighting on a Congress seat. Mallika is up against L K Advani! Brave woman!! Meera Sanyal in the plush South Mumbai against the likes of Deora. Hmm.. tough. On a related note, here's a good piece on the independent candidatures. I quite agree with his thoughts.

Wishing them all the best any way. And kudos for standing up for what is right. True inspirations in many ways.

So who looks good to win the elections? Purely going by the media bytes, UPA. One major factor that could hurt them - anti-incumbency. Can NDA clinch it? Probably. It is not a very unrealistic scenario. Can a widely spoken-about Third-front emerge? Difficult. Very difficult. Whom do I root for? I prefer to choose from the lesser of all evils and that would be UPA.

Just one thought to close on. When we pick stocks to invest in, we consider the management of the company as an extremely important criteria to base our decision on. After all, they run the company in which I invest. Same way, the leaders are extremely crucial, at least the ones who would hold the key portfolios like finance, defence, home, law, trade and ofcourse the prime ministership. We must know the political parties' nominees for each of these portfolios to base our decision on. That way, I know whom am I choosing to be the Finance Minister, Defence Minister, etc. What say?

I cannot wait much for IPL 2.0 to start. There was a lot of noise about shifting it to SA. I care two hoots about it. It does not matter where it is held. What matters is it is being held against all odds. 8 exciting teams. Lively matches. Super show in waiting. Who will win? Can't say. My heart is with Mumbai Indians for the captain being a God named SRT, literally. My mind says Delhi. On form, that is. Rest all depends on the day. Too difficult to pick a winner here. Team with key South African players might have a lot of advantage. Again, in form Duminy is with Mumbai Indians. :)

I am extremely annoyed with the amount of controversies that gets raked up relating to both the two events, especially elections. Most of it is unnecessary gibberish. A lot of it is due to ultra-stupid media reporting. I am sure there are many politicians saying great things at many places and positive speeches and remarks being made in this big country. Yet, what we get is the he-throwed-dirt-on-him and shoe stories. It makes one think whether we are so rotten deep inside! I'm sure we are not but that is not what comes out in the light. Sad.

Ironically, we do not have a lot of movie releases lined up for the coming weeks. I'm not complaining. Too many choices are always confusing.

Take a bow Abhinav!

Abhinav Bindra has achieved an extremely remarkable feat. Feeling really, really proud indeed. Kudos to you Abhinav.

Not a bad prediction na...

IPL is entering the last phase with about 5/6 matches to go for almost all teams. I had predicted Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai to go through to semis. But my fav Deccan Chargers are acting like Dhakkan Chargers. :(

Mumbai could still go through, hitting a purple patch with 5 wins in a row (including 3 over the league toppers and a very comprehensive win over Kolkata today). Chennai look to be safe along with Rajasthan and Mohali.

No point in predicting who would go on to win it. It's all about hitting the form at the right time and as they, peaking at the most appropriate moment. Once into semi-finals, it's all about that day. Remember what happened to Lahore Badshahs in the ICL tournament earlier this year? The only 2 matches they lost in the whole tournament were the 2 of the 3 finals!

Still, if I am forced to choose a team, I would say Yuvraj's Mohali might win the tournament. The team is looking extremely good. That reminds me, have you noticed their opener Shaun Marsh batting? That guy doesn't move at all when the bowler is taking a run-up. Quite a stance it is.. really still.

You thinking, why am I saying all this? To prove my last piece's point - I am still the same guys :)