Why Rahul Dravid Is Likely To Come Out Of Retirement

If you are Shahid Afridi, your idea of a perfect week goes probably something like this:

Monday: Sulking.
Tuesday: Threatening to retire.
Wednesday: Retiring.
Thursday: Hinting a comeback.
Friday: Negotiating comeback.
Saturday: Announcing comeback.
Sunday: Sulking.

But then Rahul Dravid is no Afridi despite their obvious similarity in the sense both are like poles. Dravid north and Afridi south.

So when Dravid retired, you naturally thought he was gone for good.

Doosra, however, has reasons to believe Dravid will do an Afridi and come out of his retirement.

The following conversation between The Wall and his Wife (what do you call a wall's wife? Firewall?) explains why.

Wife: There you are. Why did it take so long to get the boys from school?

RD: Well...I mean...I sort of missed the school bus.

Wife: Home come you missed such a distinct-looking bus?

RD: Err...I mean from where I stood, the bus looked quite outside the off-stump. So...I...sort of...let it go.

Wife: What! Have you lost your mind? OK, from now on you’d pick the boys from school itself.

RD: Sorry, I’m not going to that school again. Those infernal kids! One of them wrote something on my back. "Uncle, do you see what I wrote on your back?" I said "no". He said "Too bad you can't see the writing on the wall."

Wife: What!

RD: You heard it. That nickname has become my albatross. One of those little devils went further and said "Uncle, I lost my pet dog. Can I stick a bill on your back, please?"

Wife: What!

RD: And they call my son half-wall!

Wife: Good lord! What do you do now? Can’t take you to shopping either after that fight with the shopkeeper.

RD: As if that was my fault! It rained for a while and I was perfectly within the laws to ask him to revise the price under Duckworth-Lewis method.

Wife: And who started the fight in the furniture shop? You drilled 19 divans with that car key!

RD: See, I was just testing the bounce.

Wife: Bounce my foot! Gawd, don’t know what to do with you. You are no good at julienning tomatoes or dicing a cucumber, so not much of a help in the kitchen either.

RD: See I spent my career building a sound technique, largely avoiding risky cuts and slices.

Wife: You drive me crazy. You can’t polish your own shoe – you apply saliva and rub it against your trousers; you crouch and spit on your hand before you catch a flight; you refuse to go to market after tea, insisting on sending a nightwatchman; you criticise me for not having a proper follow through while ironing. I’m tired of it.

RD: So am I.

Wife: Well, get it in your head. This can’t go on. You are going back to playing cricket. You got it?

RD: I guess you have a point there, a silly point.

Rahul Dravid - Methuselah in Flannel

This piece of statistics confirmed our worst fears last years.

Rahul Dravid has faced most deliveries in test cricket's history. A staggering 29,125 before he resumed the self-flagellation in England and Australia.

And by the time he was sick with test cricket, Dravid had faced 31,258 deliveries, to go with the 15,284 in ODIs and 1369 in T20s.

Now -- and here I want you to follow closely-- if you quickly look around to make sure none is watching you and shrewdly put them together, Dravid has faced 47,911 deliveries.

For argument’s sake, let's assume every delivery took one minute each.

After all the sightscreen has to be moved; the batsman has to make sure the rival skipper has not sneaked in an extra fielder; the non-striker has to conclude his chit-chat with the mid-on fielder wherein both inquire about the female members in each other’s family and so on.

Also, the ball has to be licked, rubbed, roughened, scratched and its seam assaulted -– with nail, both human and iron, bottle-openers and even Afridi's teeth -– before the bowler starts his run up.

And if Shoaib Akhtar is the bowler, a batsman can afford a quick power nap without risking oversleeping as the Pakistani's grunt would wake him up just in time to face the ball.

You can safely say Dravid has spent an estimated 47,911 minutes waiting for deliveries.

Any stout calculator will tell you that’s slightly less than 800 hours or nearly 34 days.

To give you an idea, a female White Stork which has just laid a clutch of eggs would rush back expecting them to hatch after she had watched all deliveries aimed at Dravid at one go.

Now it takes a lot of patience to do that and I’m not talking about a female White Stork’s egg laying.

Even his staunchest detractor would admit Dravid has been patient.

In fact so patient that he was promptly drawn to a doctor who became his better half. Three-quarters, if you fuss.

So if Dravid looked like cricket's Methuselah, you know why.

He faced 47,911 deliveries, mind you. And that excludes his wife's two.

(P.S. This is a mildly-tweaked reproduction of a July 20, 2011 post)

More Tests in Eden, please

Have you seen them in queue before the ticket counter, Sir? I have.

A student had bunked class. A clerk had played truant. A shopkeeper had concocted a cock-and-bull story for his bossy wife and a youth sold a white lie to his girlfriend to be in the same sweaty serpentine queue with strange people.

And they laughed heartily as they talked about how they made their way and admired each other's ingenuity.

Shoved now and then by the mounted police, these faceless people, brought together by a common passion, had to be inside, Sir.

For just being inside would insulate them from all the ills of their daily life. Inflation, unemployment, marginalization, ideological disillusion, political cynicism, diminishing role models...

In the end of it all, some returned home with a ticket in their pocket and a smug smile on their lip.

Others dragged themselves back. But it was not over yet. As is with life, there always are a few more stones to be turned.

And the match-morning, they would invariably be inside! Having begged, borrowed or stolen there passage.

And once inside, they do wonder, Sir.

They give Harbhajan his spunk, mojo and bragging right back.

They turn Butterfinger into Goldfinger and make Laxman take blinders and do strange things with his willow.

They send nostalgia permeating through the air. They talk reverently about Dravid and indulgently about Azhar. And moan how they miss Kumble.

Sir, they infuse new life in the corpse and make Test cricket jump off its bier and pirouette!

There must be something about these people. Let's have more Tests at Eden, sir.

Please.

How 7 cricketers are preparing for Kanpur Test

1. Rahul Dravid: Plans an interaction with the IIT Kanpur faculty there. Nothing stimulates him on the eve of a Test like a free-wheeling chat on aerodynamics;

2. Amit Mishra: An interaction with ITI Kanpur faculty to explore the prospects of its mobile repairing diploma course;

3. Virender Sehwag: Toying with the idea of visiting any of the tanneries. You can't have a better place to hone your butchering and skinning skill.

4. S Sreesanth: Well, no temple/mosque/church/gurdwara is safe in the town where he lands. Humanity is yet to see a man more convinced that only a divine intervention can win him a place.

5. Harbhajan Singh: Allen Forest Zoo. His sinister motive being to first find a monkey and then call it names, including Symonds.

6. VVS Laxman: A trip to the Luv Kush barrage, purely out of avancular affection;

7. MS Dhoni: Nostalgic 15 minutes at the Kanpur Railway Station, to relive his days as ticket checker in Kharagpur;

(P.S. Doosra is in Kanpur for 2nd Ind-SL Test. Expect lot of actions over the next five days.)

Dravid missed a trick

Rahul Dravid is probably feeling like dirty latex -- thrown out after it has served the purpose.

In his heart of hearts, he knows he volunteered.

Life often doesn't give you a chance to redeem yourself. And nobody grudged when Dravid got one.

But The Wall could not see the writing on the wall.

His sacking had nothing to do with performance. But so was his recall.

He was brought back not because some people wanted to see him, but because they wanted to hide others.

Still, it was a godsend. From cricket God to His most devoted son. At least it allowed him to time his exit after one last hurrah.

But Dravid saw eternity in the ephemeral. He found long-term commitment in what was essentially a marriage of convenience.

You don't wait for the dreaded arm to grab you by the scruff of your neck before giving that final push.

Dravid did.

He was recalled with a clear use-by date and he overstayed his welcome.

You can't prevent the end but you can at least dignify it.

Dignity was his middle name. Until he lost the plot.

(Pix:www.royalchallengers.com)

7 reasons why Bangalore Royal Challengers won’t win IPL II

1. Spirit is volatile and it doesn’t last the whole nine yards;

2. Vijay Mallya has got the right men but in wrong places. For instance, Adrian Sutil spins more than Anil Kumble, while Rahul Dravid drives better than Giancarlo Fisichella;

3. You don’t open a cola bottle with Praveen Kumar but BRC can open their batting with him!

4. Ray Jennings has complained to Mallya that Jesse Ryder has not attended a single net session and is often spotted flirting with a particular Mischief Gal;

5. BRC looked a Test team in IPL I and resembles an ODI outfit in IPL II. In other words, the T20 metamorphosis is still some distance away;

6. Virat Kohli has an ego problem with spinning balls;

7. Business magnates have a penchant for bouncing cricketers’ WAGs on their knees – medics call it Stanford Syndrome -- and that explains the hurry of the BRC players to return to the pavilion.

Crystal ball gazing: Strategy Breaks in IPL II

Purists have already booked their preferred burial place but the thing ticking inside Lalit Modi’s skull can't wait to put them to sleep. Cricket luddites can go and fly a kite, Strategy Breaks are here to stay! At least till May 24.

Fuhrer Modi decrees there will be a seven-and-half minute break after every 10 overs so that Virender Sehwag can pop on your screen with a wig, MS Dhoni peddle a pesticide in bottle and Sachin Tendulkar try to convince about a bank that you just can't bank on.

Crystal ball gazing can be as much a puerile pleasure as cricket ball gazing and Doosra predicts how the following seven players would use the Strategy Breaks during IPL II:

1. Rahul Dravid: Having hit a miscued six before the break, he would shrink apologetically in his boots and shudder at the very thought of looking at himself in the mirror after this felony;

2. Harbhajan Singh: Banished to the solitude of deep third man, Bhajji would chase terrified teammates and empty his pocket to convince them that he has no hit-list this year;

3. MS Dhoni: Will rush to the coiffeur waiting just outside the rope for a new haircut resembling his wagon wheel;

4. Andrew Flintoff: Will inform Vijay Mallya about his readiness to join Bangalore Royal Challengers provided he is offered the blind-tasting job at any of his breweries for the rest of the year.

5. Ashok Dinda: Will be frogmarched off the ground for scratching all four of his quibbling Knight Riders captains;

6. Sourav Ganguly: Of them all, only Dada would be strategizing. He will tell L R Shukla, Wriddhiman Saha and Debabrata Das exactly how much they would get for switching off the dressing room light and putting a sack over John Buchanan’s head so that he can bean the Aussie.

7. Shane Warne: Would fish out his cell and frantically type a series of lewd text messages for plump British nurses before pressing the wrong button and sending it instead to his estranged wife Simone.

Why Dravid Should Quit ODIs

Once Ricky Ponting and Co. leaves the country with the Futures Cup, someone from the BCCI needs to take Rahul Dravid to the corner, lay a hand around his shoulder, appreciate his contribution and convey to him that the ODI series against Pakistan would be his last. And also tell him that the Board has a grand farewell plan for him at the end of the series.

Tough to put it in words but truth is Dravid has exceeded his shelf-life as a one day cricketer. Our affection for the man and his craft should not be allowed to clutter our common sense. An avid reader, “The Wall” surely has not missed the writing on the wall.

Of India’s Holy Trinity, Sachin Tendulkar is more effort than effervescence and Sourav Ganguly continues to oscillate between sublime and farce. But, at least, they have proved that Team India is yet to find their replacement. Unfortunately, that has not been the case with Dravid.

Dravid’s position in the batting order, especially while chasing, has become an additional woe for his captain. Mahendra Singh Dhoni can’t really toy with his former captain, who till the other day used to pass on the instructions. The Nagpur ODI is a moot case. As if explaining a defeat was not bad enough, Dhoni had to defend the decision to promote Dravid at number four. And then Ponting too made fun of the move, questioning the logic behind it.

It’s unfair to pan Dhoni. He was just trying to accommodate Dravid. I mean once the chase had gone down to the wire, Dravid is not the kind of batsman you expect to guide the side to home with some late charge. Dhoni had no other way but to send him up. And that precisely sums up Dravid’s position in the order.

Dravid was never cut out exclusively for one day cricket and all its thrill and frill and it was because of his sheer grit and industry, give credit where it’s due, that he went on to play 333-plus ODIs, scoring 10,000-plus runs – a feat any cricketer would have been proud of.

But despite his record, the series against Australia left a message, loud and clear, that Dravid does not command a place. Of course he still can play the sheet anchor’s role to perfection but often in chase, the role itself has become redundant. In such scenario, having Dravid in the ranks is a luxury India can ill-afford.

Personally for him, Dravid does not stand to gain anything from ODIs. On the contrary, he might lose his aura, which he acquired largely due to his exploits in the longer version of the game. He’s indispensable in the Test squad and is still the most bankable of Indian batsmen. He has been an intelligent cricketer throughout and he should not find trouble seeing wisdom behind quitting one dayers.

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Of sang-froid and India's Captain Cool

Leading Team India can be scary. With a billion-strong population ready to garland and guillotine you with equal fervour, you can always feel the sword of Damocles hanging precariously over your head. Refreshingly, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s leadership is neither blighted by the fear of failure nor is swayed by success.

The best thing about Dhoni is that even in the toughest of times, he does not forget to flash that disarming smile. During the bowl-out against Pakistan, in the do-or-die tie against South Africa or in the high-octane semifinal against Australia, Dhoni has always been a man in control of his emotions. In fact, at times, he seemed incredulously unexcitable by what was happening around. Shoehorned into captaincy, Dhoni makes you optimistic that he is not going to fall victim to the Too-Much-Too-Early syndrome which has claimed many a potential leader.

In contrast, his predecessor continues to baffle me. Despite having a set of sparkling teeth, Dravid hardly flashed them on-field. The only plausible reason maybe that Dravid is not the one to flaunt things. Or he did not find it fashionable. Or maybe he thought flashing a smile would dilute the seriousness of the nature of his job.

But the fact remains that Dravid took his job too seriously. An introvert person, so as a skipper, he would further withdraw to his self-imposed cocoon whenever going got tough. His brooding eyes would further sink into the socket, the shoulders would droop and he would seem as irritable as someone whose girl friend has eloped with his best friend and they took his car along with them.

Sourav Ganguly was another character, who polarized opinion like none else and he too was a spectacle as a skipper. In the gung-ho Ganguly era, latecomers just needed to have a look at the animated skipper, and not the scoreboard, to realize that the match was heading for a nail-biting finish.

Ganguly would ferociously chew his nails and spit them out is if those belonged to Greg Chappell. In adversity, Ganguly often resorted to manicure, whether he’s out there fielding or cooling his heels in the dressing room. It was only when he was batting that he was not biting – his fingers, for a change, safe behind the gloves.

Indeed, hardly any skipper in contemporary cricket symbolized and reflected his team’s tooth-and-nail fight against adversity the way Ganguly did. It would be fascinating to know the average damage caused to Ganguly’s nails per match.

It is often said that success does not come without a price and you have to admit that the Prince of Kolkata sacrificed a lot, in terms of nail growth, before he emerged as India’s most successful captain.

Prior to that, we were used to watching myriad of emotions on a babyface and Sachin Tendulkar was as expressive as a pantomime artiste of the first order. So involved in the game that every setback found an instant, and poignant, manifestation in him. He would fidget, grimace, grit teeth, wink, gawk at, yell at himself, kick up dust, shrug shoulder, tug at jersey and resemble a sulking misanthrope, convinced that the wicked world had hatched a conspiracy to doom him.

For Tendulkar, it was a matter of life and death. So instead of being the leader who would lift the morale when the chips are down, the Little Master would, invariably, be the mourner-in-chief.

In contrast, Dhoni proved he can maintain sanity in adversity. The unnerving, and innervating too, pressure could not hamper his decision-making ability – as evident from asking Robin Uthappa, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag to take the bowl-out against Pakistan or inviting Joginder Sharma to bowl the last over in the semifinal against Australia.

Dhoni proved that he has the ability to keep his mind insular, isolated from the whirlpool of occurrences around him. Make no mistake, the passion is there but not to the extent that it cripples the mind and clouds the vision. A lot is said about the need of involvement but at the same time, a little detachment probably helps a captain to put things in perspective and thankfully, Dhoni has that rare quality.

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Dravid deals the final blow to Chappell!

Tension is a good thing within a team, but it needs to be creative, not destructive. John Wright had similar problems at the start but unlike Greg he was prepared to adapt. By the end he [Wright] was more Indian than the Indians...Rahul Dravid told Mike Atherton in Sunday Telegraph.

Life comes full cycle for a certain Gregory Stephen Chappell. Sitting in his Adelaide abode, Chappell probably thought the nightmare of his Team India was behind him. How wrong he was. One episode was yet to be enacted, and it was to come from the most unexpected quarter. Chappell, not even wildest of dreams, could have imagined that of all people, it would be Dravid, his protégé, who would deal the final blow.

Dravid’s comment hints Chappell created a tense dressing room and it had a “destructive” influence on the show. Okay, Wright too had teething problems, but “unlike Greg, he was ready to adapt”. And, Dravid points out, Wright was “more Indian than the Indians”. Now that says a lot and makes interpretation redundant.

One shudders with the thought but had George W Bush opted for cricket coaching, he would have been Greg Chappell, the Team India coach. During Chappell’s stint with Team India, the Aussie ring-master echoed Bush with the message that was both hidden and loud -- you are either with us or you are against us in the fight against Sourav Ganguly. And no prize for guessing which camp Rahul Dravid belonged to.

In fact the likes of Kapil Dev and Ravi Shastri in fact went on to pan a sweetheart like Dravid for taking the backseat and allowing Chappell to call the shots on every major issues.

Chappell has been sent packing, along with his “Commitment to Excellence’ mantra, after he burnt his fingers and all five of them -- the one with which he often thumbed his nose at India’s cricket populace; the assertive index, which he often flashed at the likes of Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaheer and Harbhajan; the middle which he was notoriously attending to in Eden Gardens.

Make no mistake, Chappell was never short on ideas. But the passion and the attachment was simply not there. He always saw it as yet another deal and his pursuit of success was devoid of any emotional bond. Indian cricket was never a paragon of all cricketing virtues but Chappell’s idea of reform was devoid of love for a country, which is unique in every aspect.

If Wright was successful, it was because he sacrificed a lot. He never allowed his ego to come in the way of team’s interest and did not have a hidden agenda or a personal vendetta. Ganguly owes half his success, if note more, to this self-effacing Kiwi. If Wright succeeded, it was basically because he was a good human being and unfortunately one can’t say the same about Chappell. Dravid’s comments are bound to leave a wound somewhere in his heart, but Chappell probably deserves it.

Image: AFP

Ravi Shastri team India's interim coach?

With BCCI taking its sweet time before coming out with its decisions –a press conference is scheduled in Mumbai tomorrow – speculation was rife with a number of questions doing the rounds:

1. What happens to Greg Chappell?
2. If he’s removed, who steps into Chappell’s Chappals (that’s slipper in Hindi)?
3. Can Rahul Dravid retain captaincy?

And the likely answers are:

1. BCCI gets rid of Chappell and employs him! Simplified, it means he vacates Team India coach’s job and instead would function as Consultant at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), Bangalore.
2. Ravi Shastri is all set to step forward as India’s interim coach till next month’s Bangladesh tour, provided he gets the green signal from ESPN-STAR.
3. Dravid retains captaincy but would be interesting to see him lead a bunch of seniors who see him as Chappell’s Man Friday.

So, keep your fingers crossed for a few more hours and trust BCCI to surprise you again.

Mumbai Tech Firm Masters Crystal Ball Gazing for World Cup!

By now, Mumbai’s Fractal Analytics Ltd must have been flooded by calls from the bookies, and why not? After all they had rightly predicted that Brian Lara’s men will come on top in the World Cup opener against Pakistan! And hold on, their forecast about Lara and Inzamam-ul Haq’s scores in the match was spot on too!

Bookies, however, can eat their heart out as Mukesh Budhani, a consultant with Fractal made it clear that they are steering clear of any murky business and vehemently denied placing even personal bets.

Fractal, which otherwise earns its bread by predicting customer and employee behavior for its clients in Asia and the US, however, erred in one respect. They had predicted a close match but in the end, West Indies romped home to a facile win.
Budhani, however, is not ruffled by that and said the model cannot predict dropped catches or run-outs.
So here goes the obvious million dollar question - can Rahul Dravid do a Kapil Dev and return with the Cup? Budhani says even he doesn’t have the answer as of now and it would depend on the last match played. So the suspense continues and though knuckles must be aching, fans will have to keep their fingers crossed till April 28.

Not The Perfect Start As Team India Bus Breaks Down

Most of the cricketers are admittedly superstitious and Rahul Dravid’s men are no exception. So when their team bus broke down on the way from airport to the hotel in Port of Spain, some of them certainly saw it as a bad omen.

The Men in Blue, who landed in Port of Spain last night, was being escorted by a procession of police vehicles to the team hotel from Piarco International Airport when the bus broke down on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway near El Socorro Junction. Instantly, police personnel blocked the area and helped the cricketers relocate to a back-up bus and took them to the Hilton Hotel in St Ann's.

The cricketers need to go out for the matches in a positive frame of mind and fans can only hope that they don’t read too much into what seems a routine technical hiccup.