Cricket: Board games and bucks – Rahul Dravid out!

Rahul Dravid would have seen it coming. Others too, who were alert enough (I was not one of those). In the retrospect it would seem that the indications of a move for Dravid’s ouster started when the pack of pundits opened up after the third Test against England at the Oval.

For the first time in the history of Indian cricket we saw a captain being criticized for the margin of victory on winning a Test series in England after a couple of decades. It sounded so absurd to me who has often seen the headlines ‘India goes down fighting’ (in almost all sports). Instead of congratulating the winning captain along with his team, a group of armchair critics went for Rahul Dravid’s jugular veins – he should have made England follow on, the wise men said.

What was the captain’s objective? To win the series or take even a remote risk of the series ending on an even note? If England following on managed to get even a small lead (they scored 369/6 in 110 overs in the 2^nd innings) and the Indian batsmen buckled on the fifth day pitch, what would the critics have said? In the second innings the Indians were 11/3 at one stage.

The verbal diarrhea continued on to the ODI series. The pundits quoted all kinds of reasons why Dravid should have elected to bat first in the 1^st match. The fact that in the none too distant past India had successfully chased targets 16 consecutive times was quietly overlooked. And no body asked how Dravid could have foreseen three of his batsmen getting themselves run out in the chase.

Do all these mean that there was a concerted effort to put pressure on Dravid? With the BCCI politics, Zonal equations and the money involved, anything is possible. It is not really performance that counts in Indian cricket. Take a look at the results achieved by three successive captains:

ODIs success rate: Dravid 56%, Ganguly 53.9%, Tendulkar 35.1%

Tests Win-loss ratio: Dravid W 8 –L 6, Ganguly W 21 – L 13, Tendulkar W 4 - L 9.

Dravid’s batting:

ODI: as Captain, AVG 42.19, as player 39.38, overall 40.05. Tests: as Captain 44.51, as player 60.12, overall 56.50.

Well, the figures speak better than words. But none of these matter in the murky world of Indian cricket. We have lost a decent and dignified captain with an astute cricketing mind. For the time being there is at least one consolation. I would like to quote a message that appeared on the famous Mumbai Marine Drive hoarding when JRD Tata stepped down as Air India Chairman, “TATA does not always mean goodbye”.

Dravid would continue to be available to play for India if the powers be deign to select him.

Ends.

Indebted to Deccan Chronicle for the statistics.

Also see:

When strong men cried...

Cricket in remote areas