I always felt Dravid and Ganguly were good enough to play till 2011 world cup but then the five wise men of Indian cricket always think differently. On the hind sight, not playing ODI's has made Dravid a better test cricketer of late and may be one of the reasons why he has been injury free even after crossing 35, not undermining his work ethics though.
I felt very bad seeing Dravid wait for a couple of ODI's when Vikram Rathore failed miserable after the 96' world cup. That Rathore, Dharmani, Dravid and Laxman were men for future was not a surprize for anyone following domestic cricket then and when his chance finally came, Tendulkar ruined it and Dravid was runout. Well time has flied by and 15 years and 10889 runs later i guess, i have been bowled over by the wall.
Dravid's 107 was special, it was chennai and it was as hot and humid as it can get, but on that day 21st may 1997, Dravid rose to the challenge and proved his critics wrong. Though he would eventually loose his place in ODI's only to come back better and stronger is just amazing.
Dravid was special right from his debut because his technique made him a batsman who would find it easy to play in conditions where ball comes on to the bat and no wonder his best has come outside India on the fast and bouncy wickets of England/SA/Australia. His silken touches go to fours and he can tackle seam and swing with aplomb. He is no power hitter and hence the minimal sixes that he has hit in ODI's is no surprize either.
England '99 was special and Dravid was highest scorer in the 1999 world cup, his 150 + at Taunton with Sourav making 180+ was just special. India needed to beat Sri Lanka and they did that in style. There was no looking back for Dravid after that tournament. He scored 153 later that yeat at Hyderabad, his highest score in ODI's.
He rose to great hieghts in the next 5 years to come including the 2003 world cup where he kept wickets and finished many games. He became ODI captain and as a captain played some wonderful series'. His tenure as captain was always marred by controversial Greg Chappel, but under him India performed well.
Dravid was never a good captain, i guess he always lacked "outside the box" thinking and may be that led to his eventual exit from ODI. The greatness being the fact that he himself saw the flaws and happily resigned from captaincy once things started going bad including the dismal campaign in the 2007 world cup where India didn't even make round 2. But Dravid being Dravid took all blame on himself and took most of the brunt of it. Thankfully the ugly Chappel era was soon over and India cricket started doing well pretty quickly under MSD.
Other than the surprize recall in 2009, Dravid has rarely played any ODI's in the last 4 years and i am happy to see that the great wall has got his due and got an opportunity to say good bye to ODI cricket in style and on his own terms. I hope he plays test cricket for few more years and i want him to be highest scoreing 'man' in test cricket.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment