Rahul And I

It’s not easy being a Dravid supporter. Without either a mob following, or even widespread civilian recognition, perhaps it isn’t that easy being Rahul Dravid. This is especially so since March 2007, when Dravid-lead India crashed out of the Caribbean disaster that the World Cup was. Though that was followed by a decent tour of England where India and England shared the spoils of the Tests and ODIs respectively, for Dravid personally, the scrunity was getting sharper and the screams of opposition, louder.

Dravid’s batting began to fall from its pristine average. In hindsight, perhaps it was a stroke of genius that subsequent to that tour, he relinquished captaincy for reasons that are obscure till date, for Dhoni’s boys who went to the T20 World Cup as nearly a club side returned home with the trophy. Dravid’s batting in the subsequent series against Australia didn’t flatter either. One public ignomity followed the other.

Dravid was dropped from the ODI side, and labeled as “not adding value” by the then chairman of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar. Then in Australia, while Dravid took on the much despised role of opening the innings, and did the “dirty work”, it was only in Perth, that we saw an innings of Dravid’s standards. From them on, there was a century against South Africa, but it was mostly downhill from there on: Dravid’s batting average began to dip, the quality lacking and the stability vanishing. Half centuries were grinded through and centuries hard to come by and interspersed by long intervals of time.

Nervousness and pressure to perform seemed to be taking over one of India’s most solid batsmen. Some of us asked why, still fewer waited in patience. After the tour Sri Lanka, when Indian batting line up as a whole failed to deliver, Dravid was seen as among the chief conspirators. Many among the patient ones gave up hope, yet, a few, mind you, very few (in comparison to the garrison of Ganguly fans) held on the tiny ray of hope that the phoenix will rise again. It would only be a matter of time.

“He’s still got it, he just needs to dig it out” was our argument. We silently wished, and merrily cheered as every Test innings showed signs of revival and fluency of old.

Today, Dravid has been given another opportunity to dig it out; to show the rest of the folk what it means to be solid; to reiterate to the world that every brick in the wall counts. While it is certainly a time to rejoice, it will be shadowed by a sense of wariness, for there are still many voices who have labeled his selection in to the ODI squad as a backward move of the selectors. Dravid will want to prove his worth yet again and perhaps that when you have taken a step astray, moving backwards may not be bad at all!

Go Dravid, show us you steel yet again. Even if we don’t take to the streets, you probably will know that we are there cheering you albeit with tiny voices.


Victoria also blogs at VM's Randon Ramblings