Do you feel sorry for Dravid?

Do you feel sorry for Dravid?

The Sunday tie against Australia was a National frustration. Watching the Indian bowlers provide batting practice to the Aussie batsmen was humiliating. I wish I had the character to quit watching India play international Cricket: but opium addiction is hardly the easiest to shed, is it?

How would you put it? India missed Yuvraj? Do you think Agarkar would have tickled Australia another way? Hah!

I like Agarkar. I’ve been involved in many serious brawls with my father about it. I think the kid has tremendous potential. He beat Waqar Younis to become the fastest to a hundred wickets in ODIs, can hit the ball sweetly and many a mile, and is one of our best in the field. But where is this man when he has to throw in three simple yorkers to contain the Windies in the last over?

What’s wrong with Irfan? Is he burnt out at 22? Huh? Munaf Patel came into the side as one genuine tear away pace bowler? And now he bowls like he’s bowling to his momma’s kitty party friends. Why is Anil Kumble not playing?? Why is the best batting (Indian) side in the world repeatedly struggling to cross a total of 250??

You can go ahead with a plethora of such questions. And though I wish your doing so would help, it just wouldn’t.

A fish is known by the state of it’s head. I don’t feel sorry for Dravid: I feel a deep sense of disappointment, and anger. When Sreesanth was bowling a hat-trick of wides he was all alone. There was no one, not the fellow bowlers or the Captain, to talk to him. When Pathan finally managed to get rid of Andrew Symonds, it did not rekindle any enthusiasm in Dravid (he, as he admitted in the post match presentation, was “playing with (his) back to the wall”): he just walked up to the bowler, as if saying, “Hmm. So we’ll lose by 6 wickets now, instead of 7”.

One of my rightist thinking mates lashes back at me, reminding me of the ever so hackneyed skipper defence: “When the team plays badly, every one goes for the skipper’s throat! If we win four games in a row you would be singing in praise of Dravid!”.

Yeah, sure! But why don’t we win those matches when it matters? Look at the DLF Cup! Look at the series loss in West Indies, 4-1, was it not? And, West Indies, then, was supposed to be a struggling side. When Dravid began as Captain, the Indian team had been riding on a wave of good performances for a while. And, carrying on that wave, they won 15 games in a row, yet again reinforcing everyone’s conviction that we are a world class team, and worthy contenders for the World Cup. But, what has happened after that has been deplorable. And, I fail to blame the team for this.

Ravi Shastri put the point down with precision: Rahul Dravid needs to assume his position as captain, tell Chappel who’s boss, and put an end to this absurd experimentation policy. “Absolutely!”, say I. I’m a big fan of Rahul Dravid’s game. In our test match win in Australia, in the series win in Pakistan, and indeed in a very high number of games Rahul, ‘the Wall’, Dravid has been not just good but outstanding. However, it is his performance as the Captain of the Indian team that I cannot stand by.

Captaincy is not about getting a “C” written against your name in the team listing. It’s not also about being the best performer in your team. No, not all. Captaincy is a task of leadership. It is a performance not just as a player but as a facilitator; which means that a captain’s performance is not just an on-field, match-by-match, feature, but a lot more than that. The captain has to ensure that every player is fully aware of, and responsible towards, his contribution towards the team’s performance. It is disgusting to see Dravid complain to the press about the players not performing. He needs to realise that he’s actually complaining about his own inadequacies as the leader of the Squad.

When India’s fielding, Dravid is to be found in the slips, or some extremity of the 12-yard circle. Great captains like Steven Waugh, Hansie Cronje, Ricky Ponting, and even our own Ganguly would always try to remain as close to the bowler as they could. This helped them remain in continual conversation with the bowlers, and quite in control of the situation. As I said earlier, in Sunday’s game against Australia, Patel and Sreesanth were looking orphaned when they were conceding extras away. Irfan Pathan doesn’t quite seem to be the wicket-taking bowler he was when he was nineteen. Was he another bowler then? Or was he lead in another way?

The World Cup is 6 months away. South Africa has got it’s act together. Sri Lanka looks promising. The not-too-far-back struggling West Indies has now become a potent contender. Can India hope for something better than a place in the quarter finals? Yes, as soon as Rahul Dravid wakes up from his reverie and assumes the staff!