The Wall near the Door!

After writing a lengthy birthday tribute for one of my life’s greatest inspirations, my Father, I am a little depleted physically and mentally. Yet I do not want to shy away from recording these observations here tonight. I hope I am terribly wrong and so is my best friend Sid – and you cannot find two men who take Rahul Dravid’s game to heart more than we do. For both of us, Rahul’s batting represents a symphony set in an ethereal pitch, a symphony that evokes an emotional response containing deference, delight, gratitude and perhaps even love. But to discern that symphony being ground to the status of something like a hackneyed tune in a broken gramophone hurts – quite literally like a broken heart – and hurts big time. What is baffling is that one would have expected a sensible guy like Rahul to pick an opportune time to go and one feels that has come and gone. Seeing him bat in the last two series, I feel like he is already on borrowed time – not the best thing to say about a prodigious number 3 or one’s greatest idol, but the facts are there for all to see.

In Sri Lanka where Dravid’s defence was still working solid, commentators said he was finding ways to get out. Indeed, there was one freak dismissal to Suraj Randiv and an umpiring decision that could have gone either way. But the signs of sunset were there, not writ in stone or sounded prominently, but they were there, cooed subtly like the whispers of a grey breeze bringing in the long night. In sport, like in most other fields that test if not make human character, body language bears as much eloquence as the actual deeds in the middle. As Dravid walked back to the pavilion at the P. Sara Oval after being bowled I could see (and I admit it is subjective) something other than the disappointment of failing his lofty standards yet again. The handsome face was drained of colour and one could spot in it the faintest traces of weariness.

People who have seen Dravid in his prime would swear that seeing him get out in a similar way or to a certain type of bowling or delivery in a succession of innings is as rare as seeing Sehwag defend for an entire over, which of course is the cricketing equivalent of spotting a Halley’s Comet or understanding Einstein’s equations. But in this series, the Comet has been spotted, Einstein’s ghost has been awakened and the Wall has been breached three times out of three by: (a) a left-arm pacemen (twice to Bollinger in the last test); (ii) deliveries going across the off-stump; and (iii) strokes played away from the body – in attack or defence. Warning signs wouldn’t you think especially for a man who when in his zone used to give the impression that he had an additional eye on his back focusing on the off-stump? Writing on the wall (and no cheesiness in the use of this expression), in fact, Sid and I would say.

Cricket is a cruel game even though it may not seem as cruel as football or tennis because rapidity is often mistaken to be the mother of all sporting strains. As Peter Roebuck writes, fine sportsmen who go past their primes still linger around in the hope of one more magical hour or a half or even a minute for their ticker has been tuned to expectation, performance, consistency and winning. It is like hanging on in a relationship even though it is taxing because the tussle is familiar while getting out entails encountering alien emptiness. Gooch might have scored more than half of his test runs after his fortieth summer including a majestic 333 against India at Lord's but he is an exception. Tendulkar at 37 may be the ICC Cricketer of the Year after a dream year. Tendulkar is Tendulkar anyway and I wonder at times if he had immortality at heart alongside bat in hand when he first faced up to a bowler. But sport levels. Even Sir Donald – the greatest of cricketers – had to settle for an imperfect 99.94.

The rest of the sporting fraternity comprises mere mortals, some more skilled than others, a few more resilient than the rest and a lot who remain in the fringes – ask Badrinath – but once their present turns past everything ceases to be irrelevant for old deeds are forgotten at the sight of a new kid in the block. Change is no foe to sport, in fact, sport thrives on it. At the end of the day everyone has to step out of the dream, look at the sun, understand that it is time for others to live the dream and walk away. Mind you, it is difficult in general to walk away as you will hear men and women who have slogged with sloth behind thankless cubicles tell you that they find it hard to retire. It is even tougher in competitive sport. It requires mental clarity, firm will, the assurance from those who keep you grounded outside of your game’s nadirs and zeniths that all is going to be fine and some luck which can go a long way towards setting up a good if not a fairytale ending. Steve Waugh’s farewell was befitting as he set into darkness doing what he used to do best – play a combative knock which saved Australia his farewell test at Sydney. Comparisons between Waugh and Dravid are  quite natural but when it comes to retirement, (my friend as well as) I feel that Dravid has already missed doing a Steve Waugh.

Even if Rahul Dravid only comes up with single digit efforts in the rest of his test career, even is his catch aggregate remains on 198 and even if he is booed by a nation’s fickle crowd which has done it to him in the past, the admiration Sid and I have for the man will not dwindle. For it is a faith, a sort of fondness transfused into our bloodlines and is non-negotiable. But the muffled titters and mockery will hurt especially when he could have gone on a high at so many points during the last year or so. Fact is he deserves to go on a high. India may be brittle without Dravid in South Africa but even with him I do not see the middle order getting fortified. That is wishful thinking based on a record book which aside from statistics is just history. In any case, Dravid's performances in South Africa may be at best described as lukewarm.  His increased uncertainty outside off will be spotted and ruthlessly exploited by Steyn, Morkel and company. For the first time in the last fourteen years, I must say this: it is better for the team to feel insecure without the cushion of 11500 runs than carry the baggage of a frustrated legend. The door is ajar. And it won’t be long before others force it open for such is the order of sport and the ordainment of time through the offices of age. And we hope Dravid calls time in his own terms before that, forthrightly and confidently, exactly the manner of his forward defence which will be an enduring memory of the man that cricinfo refers to be among the last classical test batsmen.

Has the Wall cracked?!

As the India-Sri Lanka three series rubber, which in hindsight can be called quite literally that, reaches the business end with an Indian interest surprisingly remnant in the last two days,  I am contemplating the swan song of one of my favourite cricketers ever and my favourite batsman to have ever played the game. Swan song, some may ask, because Rahul Dravid himself has not quite evinced any interest of retirement? Yet sport is as metaphorical an agent of human destiny as any other where a practitioner's end foreshadows him. So, as Sachin Tendulkar's second coming - or is it third? - continues with staggering consistency and keeps putting the master beyond Ponting's and everybody else's grasp among other things, Dravid's half century-less series which may well conclude that way does give me that lump-throat feeling of truth as I had pointed out on twitter. And it is not at all about the number of runs he has scored which can vary with good fortune or lack of it. 

Sample this. Venue: Sinhalese Sports Club (a.k.a bowlers graveyard these days). Sri Lanka has mauled the Indian bowlers in getting to 642. Vijay and a marauding Sehwag have put on 165 for the first wicket. Enter Dravid, plays eighteen balls for 3 and then plays back to one that's only slightly quicker, by no stretch of imagination a Goliath-slayer so to speak. Gets adjudged LBW beyond a smidgen of doubt. In an innings where every other Indian - barring Harbhajan Singh - would get off the mark and reach double figures, Dravid's end was uncharacteristic and dismal considering the pitch but sadly betrayed the only technical defect that he arguably has, playing round the front pad, which lets him down when he is out of touch. Fast forward to the post-tea session on Day 2 of the final test at the P Sara Oval. Dravid strokes some silken drives through extra-cover and down the ground to get to a rapid 23. And then he plays slightly back to a ball he should have been forward to. The ball would take half of leg stump and Simon Taufel does not give those not out even in dreams within a dream! A finely blossoming innings done in - again by playing round the front pads.

For a casual onlooker, Rahul's dismissals within a space of a session under ten days may not ring any bells. But for someone like me who has followed his career closely as a cricket aficionado as well as a fan of his batting, these successive dismissals suggest something that has been, in cricketing circles, unheard of as far as Dravid is concerned: they were an action of replay of each other, the variables being the pitch, the bowler type of the bowler and the umpire who gave the verdict on the two occasions. After fourteen years and 140 odd tests Dravid remains a keen student of the game and he himself would know exactly what I am pointing out. Is it a mere coincidence? If it is not, is it Dravid's physical reflexes which are abandoning him (for the mental side of his game hardly becomes casual and remains one of his greatest assets)? 

Even the gritty forty-four in the second innings of the crucial test at Galle ended with a casual - read unDravid-like - airy flick on the leg side. That the dismissal triggered a batting implosion heralded by retiring giant Murali will go into Sri Lankan cricketing lore forever. What if Dravid and Tendulkar had survived the night and batted the next morning? Perhaps, we might have saved the test match and the series would still be love-all. Yet sport just like life cannot take more than just cold wisdom from the teachings of hindsight.  

While a lot seems to have gone on in the Wall's cricketing career since his return from that inopportune injury he sustained in Bangladesh earlier this year, an effect that time allied by a challenged and therefore desperate mind is able to concoct when the going gets to thwart your sanity among other things, only four innings have in reality gone by without his scoring a hundred. Yet this glorious game, often abominably reduced to reams of statistics, is more than just numbers. Dravid himself understands that better than others who may get carried away by the lovely but sometime superficial contours of statistical Manhattans. Which is why the mode of his recent dismissals becomes such a stark signal begging - if unwittingly - the question: has the wall cracked to the extent that even innings displaying qualities of great fight will be seen no more?

The last time I asked that question was sometime in the December of 2008 when everybody, including the likes of my dearest friend Siddharth and me, was preparing to give the Wall a half-sighed half-smiled farewell. He already had ten and quarter thousand runs then and twenty-five hundreds. What followed was satisfying for a Dravid fan: a fluent 136 against England at Mohali, a consistent although ton-less tour of New Zealand, and three more hundreds. Along the way, Dravid has gone past 11,000 test runs, crossed Allan Border, returned from another injury and looked solid before returning to the pavilion to singular mistakes which Dravid would own up to.

One more innings remains for Dravid and India in this series, and going by the way the match is shaping up it may be a match-winning - and series-winning - innings or a match-losing outing. So often in the past, Dravid has stepped up to the plate in crucial last game scenarios: Jamaica 2006 and Rawalpindi 2004 come to mind instantly with the freshness of today's dawn. Even as the realist in me wonders if Dravid has the capacity to bite the bullet, quell the jangling nerves and do an encore that gave him the tag Mr. Dependable, the undying romanticist in me, that will love Dravid irrespective of whatever he accomplishes or does not accomplish henceforth, hopes for a miracle. With a two-test cameo series against Australia in the offing, Dravid may well be looking forward for substantial runs against the previous decade's Indian arch-enemy in tests too for it could be his last battle against them. 

But as Peter Roebuck rightly says: there are only so many battles left in a man. Perhaps, Dravid's reserves of resilience are at their dregs. You could say that whatever Dravid has been since he warded off two seasons of woeful form are a bonus! Tendulkar remains a genius and merits no comparison with anyone else on any given batting criterion, even those yet to be invented, unless the criterion goes simply by the surname Bradman. Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara, Manish Pandey, Rohit Sharma, Badri and others are chipping away in domestic cricket, their runs becoming a fusillade at various position in the Indian batting line-up. Dravid's own position at 3 is not as strong as it used to be. But for what it once was, and for a very long time, Dravid's name in Indian cricket will remain synonymous with dependability, dedication and depth. 

That he will always be remembered as a foot solider and not as a commander or a general is not an embarrassment and is sometimes, in fact, irrelevant. It stands for whatever Dravid has stood for, through victories at Rawalpindi, Headingley, Kandy, Kingston, Perth, Kolkata and Adelaide, draws at the Oval, Port Elizabeth, Johannesberg and Hamilton and heart-breaking losses at Durban (1996), Karachi, Barbados, Sydney and elsewhere. It stands for a sportsman who has made the most use of his abilities and pushed the boundaries of limitations manifold more than anybody including he would have expected and a man who more often than not challenged the best out of himself when the team was down for the count. Pride, performance and forthrightness have driven Dravid on the field making him a Steve Waugh-like champion. And humility has kept him grounded as a person off it.