If the Indians have to learn something from the second day of the Melbourne test, let it be this! Being a team man to the core is admirable but when the team man bats as Rahul Dravid did while donning the unfamiliar role of opener on the 2nd day of the test, it is better to be slightly selfish and say "Sorry mate, I don't think I can". The team might fare better for that piece of selfish honesty.
Rahul Dravid hasn't had the best of times, on field and off-field, over the past few months but when he volunteered to open in Melbourne, he should get one thing clearly into his head. A sacrifice is worth it only if it has some chance of coming off; the way Dravid batted today, it seemed that by making the sacrifice Dravid had done his bit and nothing more could be asked from him. When Dravid got out, Shastri who was commentating at that time rightly put it – "we could all see it coming; this was waiting to happen". Whatever demons Dravid has in his mind are for him to fight; by taking the opener position and screwing it up as badly as he did, he is not being a team man; he is being foolish, and the team is losing out because of that foolishness.
Dravid was my opener of choice for this test simply because I wanted Sehwag to be in and the only way for that to happen was to see Jaffer sit out. I still think Dravid to be the best opener among the current lot if we were to consider the options before us (and not consider Jaffer / Dinesh Karthick) but if a Dravid burdened by his own demons is going to do what he did in Melbourne, better to pat him on the back and say "Thanks, mate but no thanks! I will take a Ganguly or a Yuveraj to open who might not be as accomplished as you are but whose attitude might get us a better start than you currently look like giving us".
It wasn't just that Dravid was slow; he never was a rocket in terms of strike rates anyways and that hasn't taken away anything from his accomplishments. What was sad today was the complete lack of any game plan on his part. If there had been a Sehwag at the other end, Dravid might be well advised to drop anchor (and even that doesn't mean 5 off 66 balls) but with Jaffer, who is an off-now-on-now kind of batsman in terms of scoring, Dravid had to carry his own weight in terms of contributing to the score. In test matches against Australia in Australia, time is rarely of the essence in terms of batting out draws, and in the first innings of a match replying to a very modest 340 odd score, there is no worse contribution one can give the team than to completely become stroke-less.
Last time around in Australia, Akash Chopra was someone who didn't exactly race off the starting blocks. However, two factors were starkly different from this time around! Firstly, Chopra had Sehwag for company who never let scoring be an issue to worry about. Secondly, even for his slow batting, Chopra never burdened his partner by becoming completely stroke-less. Go back to the highlights of the last tour and the striking feature of the excellent starts the team got back then were the well run singles between Sehwag and Chopra, something completely absent today where Dravid played out one bowler and the batsman at the other end played out the other.
The games have started, Mr. Dravid, team man to the core! Wake up!
RSS Feeds
Dec 27th, 2007 
BACK TO TOP
1. really,it's disoppionting that always dravid is treated like this.shame on indian team management,and on all senior players.really hatsoff to dravid the ikon of india and legendary player.