Reason or romance

During my school run this morning, I was listening to a program on the radio. A lot of callers to the RJ were complaining on the decision of Indian Cricket Selectors to leave out Yuvraj Singh from the 15 players selected for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 to be held in Australia - New zealand from Feb 2015. I was like, "Hey, be reasonable guys, he wasn't even in the 30 probable list. How then can he be selected in the 15?".

Now wait a minute! Reasonable? That word seems pretty rich coming from me! As you all know, I have always been (will continue to be a Dravid fan). I do acknowledge (grudgingly!) that Dravid's ODI career spanned in a parallel universe to that of his test career. But even I would have been disappointed if Dravid hadn't made the cut to a World Cup squad! But again, this blog isn't about Dravid, its about Yuvraj!

I have been following cricket seriously since early nineties and I can't remember many good left-handers to have played for India. All I can remember of Kambli was him crying during the 1996 WC semi-finals. Then came along Ganguly. He was elegance personified on the off-side. As Dravid so eloquently put it "On the offside,first we have God, and then Saurav Ganguly". If one had to complete that sentence, it would read "On the offside, first we have God and then Saurav Ganguly, while on the leg-side we have every tom, dick and harry and then we have Ganguly!!"

Mind you! Ganguly was excellent player against leg-spinners and left arm spinners. Can anyone of you forget him dancing down the track and carting Grant Flower over the roof in Sharjah. He did it quite too often that Tony Greig even called that part Sharjah's roof as Ganguly's roof!!  But power is not something that you associate with Ganguly. But his batting against pace didn't inspire confidence, that you would associate with most southpaws.

In late 2000, Ganguly captained a fresh team for ICC Knockout Trophy that was held in South Africa. The Indian team was still recovering from the abyss of the match fixing and they huffed and puffed their way into quarter-finals against Australia. It was one rainy afternoon in Chennai. I was in a cheap electronics shop at Ritchie Street, Chennai taking the help of my friends in assembling my first PC and we were also following the match in an old B&W TV present in the shop. There were many memorable moments in that match.  But the two that standout are:

• 18 year old Yuvi playing in his 2nd match of his career, facing a battery of pace bowlers showed what real power was! He was slamming McGrath, Lee and Gillespie all over the park. The raw power in his strokes was quite evident. Finally, we had a southpaw who could play pace bowling really well. 
• India also managed to find a pace bowler who could actually bowl yorkers in the death overs! Zaheer Khan's yorker to dismiss Steve Waugh was one such delivery!

And then in one summer evening at Lords. The 2002 Natwest Trophy final(The match that Ganguly taught us how to celebrate in style)! India were 150/5 chasing England's 325. All recognized batsman had failed. I can recollect vividly all those brutal shots of Yuvi and Kaif. Yuvi fell to a mis-timed pull shot in that match after ensuring India were well within the reach of the target. I still remember Harsha Bhogle saying at that time "this is the problem with fairy tale finishes....", but that innings again proved that Yuvi was a match-winner.

Forward to 2007, the World Twenty20 championship. India vs England quarter-final. The brutal onslaught unleashed by Yuvi will surely haunt Stuart Broad his entire lifetime. I am pretty sure he wakes up in cold sweat every now and then remembering that pasting!

Forward to 2011, the man was back in action. His performance especially against Australia again in the quarter-finals was brilliant. What followed was history. He was played the series of his dreams. He actually lived the dream in that series.

Lets face it, each of his fairy tale performances were school boy cricketer dreams! How many of us have wished for similar baptism by fire debut, a stellar performance when the chips were down that helps the team win the cup, the sensational innings in the shortest version of the game and finally achieving glory at World Cup. Hell, I would break two legs and a hand to live that dream!

For quite often Yuvi was the very the reason for his fans to romance, you can't fault them this once to romance without a reason! His fans must be happy that his fairy tale ended on a high. They need not be disappointed on him not making to the team this time around and take pride from the fact that fairy tale was great while it lasted.

What is Dravid like in real life?

Well read this http://www.sportskeeda.com/cricket/inspirational-story-rahul-dravid-conversing-bed-ridden-fan-skype


And a funny exchange between Saurav and Rahul in the commentary box

http://www.sportskeeda.com/cricket/rahul-dravid-sourav-ganguly-banter-commentary

Draxman Saga

13 summers ago, on this very day, My friends and I decided to bunk college and go to a movie, a decision which I have regretted till this date! Why you ask? Well, it was on that day, a partnership in cricketing parlance, known as Draxman union began. The Draxman Saga (Dravid - Laxman) is something that cricket lovers of my generation (30ish something) will recall with fond memories.

For those who came in late, back in 2001, the Indian team wasn't world beaters (Well they aren't so even now, but at least they weren't as consistent as they are now!). The Indian team had got their worst pasting in Australia back in '99, then came the match-fixing controversy. The public had lost confidence in the team. A new Captain was at the helm and the team was picking one broken stick at a time.

Meanwhile, the Australian team was on a roll. The juggernaut had won 16 tests in a row. And just a week back, they had steam-rolled India at Wankhede in under 3 days! The Aussies had already started their mental disintegration tactics. Michael Slater continued to sledge Dravid at Wankhede.

Eden Gardens wasn't a lucky ground for India as well and but surprisingly India managed to restrict Australia to under 300 for around 8 wickets on day one. But then Captain "Ice Man" managed to get Australia beyond 400 on day 2, while India was reduced to 128/8.

On day-3 India was asked to follow-on, we were able to witness the magician Laxman at work. He did score a century. But like all Indian cricket fans at that time, we thought the innings was just a flash in the pan, and the floodgates of wickets would with the fall of just one more wicket. On day 4, my friends and I wanted to save ourselves from another heartburn, hence decided to bunk college and go to a movie (For the record the movie was *Minnale*, which became a cult classic in its own right, and continues to remain even today, one of the favorites of many my generation).

While returning home from the movie, I avoided discussing the match with others. Only after I returned home was I aware of what I had missed. I regretted that decision so badly, that I decided to bunk college again the very next day in order to catch the action on day 5. Not that I was confident that India will win, I was only hoping to watch more of the Draxman partnership.

What happened on day-5 is history. You don't need me to say what happened, you can read that on Cricinfo. The Indian coach in his book "Indian Summers" calls this innings as the biggest comeback since Lazarus. Well, I don't know what he means by that, neither do I know who was Lazarus. But that one innings was the turning point in Indian cricket.

An average Indian fan was always a "die-hard". He/She would have continued to support the team, come what may. But that one inning gave the average Indian fan confidence to trust the team to bounce back even when the chips were down!

Scaling the Wall

No, this is not a blog on "How to scale a Wall"! Scaling a wall is for that matter is a very old sport, this was one of the favorite sports of yours truly and his friends a long time ago in Bangalore! The wall, I am referring to here, is no ordinary one. I am referring of *The Wall*. No, not the Great Wall of China! I mean the Great Wall of India - Rahul Dravid!

Speculations are rife that Rahul Dravid will be announcing his retirement from test cricket tomorrow. Given that he has already retired from ODIs and T20s, this really means that we will no longer be seeing *The Wall* on National duty after tomorrow!! This blog isn't fan's paean to a celebrated hero! Better hands and pens have done that/will continue to do that in the next few days. What I cite here is my experiences of being an admirer of a very remarkable cricketer and person!

Coming back to the topic, What do I mean by scaling the wall? To scale *The Wall* in cricket? Well, that is a no-brainer! Better cricketers have tried that and failed. Failed miserably! And I am not even a professional cricketer. My only claim to fame in the world of cricket was to be the most economical bowler in a sub-regional cricket match where I represented my school team as a second change bowler (Achieving an economy rate of 4 something, when every other bowler had an economy rate above 7.0 is really an achievement!). And that performance did not really don't inspire anyone. My captain Ramprasad did not allow me to even have a bowl in the same tournament the next year(There Ram, I said it!!). I even had the notorious distinction of being the Chetan Sharma of the School Cricket team. I threw away a match against our junior team, but allowing the batsman to score a 4 in the last ball of the match (Damn you Manish Biswas!!!). So obviously, there was no chance of that!

What does one do, when one cannot beat someone, you join them! In the essence, you try to ape them! This is exactly what I did. I had always been a Sachin fan, ever since I started watching Cricket, that is until I saw Dravid! Rahul Dravid debuted for India in ODI in 1996/97 in a match against SL at Singapore. At that point of time, I hadn't even heard of him (No I did not see Dravid scoring 95 against England at Lords!). In fact, I was pretty angry with the team selection, because I was disappointed that Vikram Rathore had not been given a chance. Dravid didn't score much in that match (I think he scored 3 and was incorrectly given out when the ball had brushed his pads). The first time I *noticed* Dravid was in the Titan cup match when he and Azhar put on a decent partnership and helped in India beat Australia in the semi-finals. That inning was to become my sneak-peak to this wonderful journey of 16 years as a Rahul Dravid fan! Every street cricketer tries to ape their favorite cricketer in someway or the other. One tries to play with a very heavy bat, another tries the two-eyed stance (Many regretted that decision after the match-fixing scandal!) and there were others like me who tried aping the shots! First, it was the flick, which I had to change to the *exaggerated on-drive* of Rahul Dravid (Not that I was very successful, I ended up making a fool of myself quite often!). And as expected failed very miserably at that too! I was fortunate enough to meet him personally once! In 1998, just before the World Cup, Dravid was out of the ODI team and played a lot of club cricket in Chennai. Guru Nanak college hosted numerous club cricket games that season. In one game (Butchi Babu) tournament, we had both Dravid (for Vijay CC) and Raju (for some other team) playing at the GNC grounds. More than half of our class were at the ground bunking classes to watch him. That really was a wonderful experience, watching him bat at MY college, something that others can't witness! After the match, a lot of guys went to get his autograph. I ran too. Dravid was really polite and did not refuse anyone. He patiently signed for everyone one of them! One fellow even asked him his Chennai address, Dravid was polite and kind enough to entertain him as well. It was on that day, I saw the person behind the player! It was then that I decided that I shall at least try aping him as a person!

I won't delve into Dravid's career history, that is for everyone to see. But will highlight one strange connection that I had with him. Everytime time I was going through a very difficult stage/situation in my life, Dravid had a purple patch in his career! And every time the tide changed in my life, the form of Dravid dipped. This one time in Feb/Mar 2001, I had just cleared the SCJP with flying colors and it was probably the best phases of my life, while as expected Dravid wasn't doing well with the bat! The Australian juggernaut had steamrolled India in the first test and the Indian team had gotten themselves all-out with a very low score in Calcutta! Given that, I was going through a purple patch, I decided to stop watching the match and bunked college to go for a movie! My! How much did I regret that decision!! That was probably one of his best innings and I missed it! That was probably the only time when both Dravid and I were experiencing a purple patch at the same time! If only such situations co-existed more often! Thankfully, I was fortunate enough to watch his Headingley innings and the other gems of the 2002 tour of England and 2003 tour of Australia!

To cut a long story short, this unique relation between Dravid and me continued for long and I must admit I have failed miserably even at aping him as a person! After all even the GOD of cricket has said, *There can never be another Dravid*; Sachin meant the Dravid the player. He wouldn't be far-off had he said there will never be another Dravid (Dravid the person)! It is now that I realize that there are walls that none can scale and there are walls that none can mend! Dravid's retirement is not just a loss for Indian Cricket, it is a loss for every purist of the game! All said and done, I must say, I am privilidged to have lived in an era, where Cricketers were also role models! That is something the current generation certainly wont be able to witness!

Thank you Dravid for all those wonderful memories! You have never got the due you deserved! All those nay-sayers will understand your worth only when on a juicy pitch India lose a wicket early!!

What next for Dravid: Given the fact that he is immensely respected in England, Scotland and New zealand, don't be surprised if he ends up being a coach of the English, Scotland or New zealand!

PS: I wanted to write more, but then came across this wonderful tribute to Dravid by Sidvee. He captured everything that I wanted to say!