Sunil Gavaskar once said, that there is no cricket team in the world in which Dravid won’t be included. Pakistan coach Javed Miandad said, that Pakistan only lacks to two thing-Madhuri Dixit and Rahul Dravid. And that very Rahul Dravid is not in the team anymore! Are our selectors insane? Keeping Sachin and Ganguly does make a lot of sense, after all, how many matches they have won for India.. but more important is how many tests have they saved? You just cant keep a player of class of him out of the team, be it on account of bad form, or politics or whatever!
Agreed, that the new crop is pretty good, all of ’em are brimming with confidence and alacrity. But we’re not considering the most crucial test herein, none of them had withstood the test of time. Can anyone of you tell me, where are Dinesh Mongia, Hemang Badani, Hrishikesh Kanitkar(match winner against Pakistan in the finals of Independence Cup 1998), Vijay Bhardwaj(Man of the Series in his debut tour to Kenya in Nairobi Cup), Iqbal Siddiqui(aka the next Kapil Dev), Amay Khurasia(opener during ’99 world cup), Akash Chopra(unprecedented success during Australian tour).. and they were just batsmen. India has always been on look out for a quality pacer since Sreenath, so we would not discuss the plight of plethora of Bowlers of any genre here.
A very recent add on to this list would be Sehwag and Kaif, I believe. God forbid, but this could very well be the case with Uthappa, Gambhir or any other member of the winning team of Twenty20 world cup. Dravid has been through all, by all.. I really mean all! He made test debut in ’96, alongside Ganguly, and was at once installed permanently in the test team. But it took him 4 years of toil to cater to the needs of ODIs. How many people in world cricket have that kind of temperament to change their technique so drastically.. notwithstanding his determination alone. Leaving out Sachin is always justified technically, coz I always believed there is absolutely no comparison between him and Dravid. They are a league apart. Sachin is more like a show-piece nowadays, he had always been the cynosure of mob. He is only best when he is at his best, which is a rare and most unlikely thing to happen. Dravid, on the other hand has always been the subdued backbone of the team. Somehow his moments of glory were always overshadowed by other’s greater feats. Be it Laxman with his knock of 281, Ganuly with his knock of 183 or Sachin at 189 not out. One common factor to all these seemingly disparate innings was Dravid with 154, 145* and 153 respectively. He was the guy around which other big boys built their fortunes. And he was coolly in the shadows, but he never cribbed.. no big words by him, just bigger and bigger innings.
Speaking about record books, he is the only batsman to have been in partner with two biggest partnership in ODIs- 318 with Ganguly and 331 with Sachin. He hold the record of fastest 50 by an Indian Batsmen, of 20 balls. He was the only successful batsmen of the otherwise forgettable tour of South Africa in ’97, hitting Alan Donald for two consecutive straight sixes. All this by the batsmen who once wasn’t considered fit for One Day cricket, and He prooved all of them wrong, with nonchalant elan. He has scored more double centuries in tests than legendary Gavaskar. His average in both forms of the game has been right at top. His only rival in test-average being Ponting, no one even close enough to bother. Statistics, as in the words of Mr. Sidhu (the talking surd) are like bikinis, revealing everything but hiding the most important. They do not tell us under what circumstances, against whom have the big guns being smashing records. Upon acute vivisection of all his innings, things would be even more crystal clear. Not to mention, He is the only batsmen after Steve Waugh to score a century against every test playing nation of his time( which are ten, to be precise) and the only batsman of all time to to score a century in every test playing nation. Howzzat? Do we still need reasons for him being in the team?
I must say, I’ve never been devastated more than any decision of BCCI than this one. The selectors are much better than me in every aspect, I know.. then how can they even think of doing something like this? Lets be frank, Sachin and Ganguly are in twilight of their magnificent careers, but not Dravid. Batsmen of his class get more mature, and consequently more lethal and indispensable. Classic examples are Gavaskar, Border, Boon, Getting, Rice, Lloyd and ofcourse Bradman. Can Brazil play against Argentina with Ronaldinho out? Could Australia face England without Ponting? Then how can India imagine themselves playing against Pakistan without Dravid? Dravid is sine qua non for Team India, irrespective of rare bad patch. Get him back guys. Against the kind of quality fast bowling of Pakistan, we stand no where without him.
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