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a case against dravid...

by straight point

now that india is out of the champions trophy it will be interesting to see how our selectors react to the situation...

specially to dravid... who was brought back from the brink as an answer to our short pitch bowling woes... throughout the tri-series in sri lanka and our short stay in the champions trophy in south africa... i kept a close eye on it and was amused to see that opposition teams didn't even try it fearing dravid's presence at the crease...

sarcasm apart... how many dismissals did you see due to short pitch stuff...? on the contrary dravid's presence created some kind of confusion in the ranks for what exactly his role is and how others should bat around him... coz on both counts the only winner would have been dravid... while others... much younger and far more inexperienced than dravid bore the brunt of scoring runs quickly and perishing in doing so...

one could argue that it always has been the role of dravid to bat thru... to keep one end secure so that dashers can score at other end freely etc etc... my argument is that dravid too stuck to this premise religiously... and dare say conveniently... despite being better placed... in the absence of sehwag and yuvraj... when he should have assumed more responsibility than he actually took...

i said that coz when raina got out he left the scene even stevens with pakistan looking more nervous than india... and it was that time when dravid should have taken the responsibility of scoring more with some calculated risks and possibly a batting power play that would have made pathan feel at home... but he left it too late waiting for only free hit balls to score boundaries and pushing for a single or two on others... when asking rate was climbing sharply and not much batting left in the ranks... as it happened when india took batting power play it was too late for too little coz we didn't have anybody at the other end to exploit it...

if ever there was need to overstep the brief assigned to him it was the match against pakistan when he was all set and hardly looked in any trouble... if the experience of more than 20 thousand  runs with about 40 international centuries comes up and say i was acting on the brief assigned to me to stay at wicket while others score... then i am sorry but you have to say that he really stuck to that...

i rest my case here...

6 comments:

Bhaskar Khaund said...

I do understand what you're saying SP but , gee, i really hate to say anyting against RD ..he shudn't have been picked in the first face , cos a guy like that doesn't deserve to be dropped twice at this point in his career but clearly there's no place for him - WTF were the selectors thinking ?? Anyway , in the Pak game , look , he left it only for a LITTLE too late ...i thought he did a very good job until then..i doubt Raina's innings wud have happened if RD was back in the pavilion by then....hey , for me , the bowlers lost us that match . period.
it was 65-3 remember ? And Shoaib Malik of all people creamed a
100+SR century , how much worse can it get ? Cheers

Bhaskar Khaund said...

whoops , i meant , "he shudn't have been picked in the first PLACE" :-)

Anonymous said...

nice blog
Australia v England Live in ICC Champions Trophy 2009http://mixx-sports.blogspot.com/2009/10/australia-v-england-live-in-icc.html

straight point said...

so we do agree bhaskar that he left it for too late... however how LITTLE late is subjective matter... :)

Balajhi said...

Hi SP

That's the question in my mind also. But then the difference is I want him out for different reasons. His running is awful and his fielding is just about average once he is out of slips. In any case we have better players for sub-continent conditions.

Coming to your point, but for Dravid we would have been shot out for much lower score against Pak. We were in the hunt till the last 10 overs only because of Dravid. A sheet anchor's role is a thankless one SP. When it goes right, the ones who scored get praised. When things go wrong the sheet anchor is criticised.

When Dravid got out the asking rate was 8 with 8 overs to go. That I think was achievable but for the wickets. Had yousuf or even Raina stayed things could have been different at the same stage. The reason we lost against Pak was not Dravid but Kohli's nonsense, Raina's bad luck and Dhoni's failure.

If a sheet anchor can score at 70+ in the middle and end up around 80 at the end then surely others can benefit from the stability factor and score more freely. It is too much to ask an anchor to score fast yet keep the wicket. It's such a thankless job SP. Dravid was rotating the strike and giving Gambhir and later Raina the strike to go at bowlers. He was doing his job. Then came yusuf and Dravid was expected to do the same. But he left. With Harbhajan and others left the best chance was to take the game to last 5 overs and give your best with around 9 or 10 to get. No way Dravid and Harbi could have hit out from 39th over onwards and still won the game.

SP there are others who play the kind of knock that Dravid played. In fact we do praise some and ignore some that fail. But if it is Dravid then limelight of SR is on him. We forget his performance in England before he was dropped. The way he tonked Broad and Co. We forget that he had exploded in end overs (45 - 50) on number of occasions because his tag that of wall or snail dominates our mind. It's not his ability but the brief given to him and what is expected of him differs with that. He plays for the team though it's not seen that way always.

I wish Dravid bid farewell to ODIs and leave the turf for youngsters. His running is poor and his doubts in calling makes it awful. I like to see Pujara take his place.

straight point said...

thank you very much for your comment bala...

you would have noticed in my post too that my problem with dravid was post raina dismissal... as i said raina left the scene when asking rate was about 6.25 or somthing close to this which in modern days is not demanding...

it was also not easy for a new batsman to come and straight away start hitting... there i thought he should have assumed more responsibility in scoring with some calculated risk and let pathan settle a bit... but what happened was in start contrast to that...

if only dravid let lose sometimes which he is perfectly capable of as you too have put an example of his england innings and his ipl stints... that he is capable of using long handle when the requirement arise... and that's where i think he lacked in judging the gravity of situation... it was no wonder that by the time we took batting powerplay it was nearly a formality with result being forgone conclusion...