Thursday, February 02, 2006

Seventeen seconds, and Dravid makes another volte-face...

This man is a disgrace - Rahul Dravid.

May be he is one of the best cricketers in the world, surely the current best player in the Indian cricket team (sorry, the BCCI-XI), but as a captain? Or as a leader? Or as a human being? Each day, he is proving that what I wrote in a previous post, is infact the truth, the only truth and nothing but the truth. He is a human, an ordinary human being - not a good human, with all the human instincts - the most basic of them being selfishness and greed. He wanted to be the captain, and he would sink to any depth for that.

India lost to Pakistan in Karachi, one of their heaviest defeats, and Dravid is not ready to accept his mistakes. Once he says - "It's against my nature to speak about any individual's performance" (read Ganguly's performance) - within seventeen seconds, he makes a volte-face, and starts talking about Yuvraj Singh. Okay, Yuvraj played well, scored a hundred (fighting? I doubt it. His hundred came when all hopes were gone, and there was no pressure what so ever at all) - but this man, Ganguly, playing under immense pressure, was the second highest scorer in the team. He atleast tried to fight - which our so called "world-beater" batting line-up couldn't do...all the big names caved in showing a spineless display of batting.

The same question comes back over and over...why isn't there an uniform criteria for every individual? With his current form, does even Sachin merit a place in the team? I guess not. But, does Dravid have the courage to drop him? I know he doesn't. It's easy to drop Ganguly, to humiliate him, because he will get the backing from Kiran More, Greg Chappel, and a large section of the media...almost all of whom have some personal vendetta here.

A month on, Engalnd is to visit India, and I'm sure Ganguly will be excluded from the team on some grounds (how much does it take to create a reason anyway). But the rest, even with their spineless display, and despite the ratings provided by TOI and BBC which won't count in the minds of Dravid, Chappel and More, will stay. Sachin is a so-called giant, so he has to stay. Laxman is in the good books of Dravid, yeah a friend I guess - so he will stay. Rahul Dravid will stay as the captain, even though he allowed Paksitan a free ride from 39/6, till another Dravid is created to kick him out - and I hope he gets the taste of his own medicine.

Another fact which will remain intact as well is - with the same group of bowlers and batsmen, Ganguly was able to steer India to a famous 2-1 victory, the only Indian captain in the past fifty odd years. And Geoff Boycott will still say that he is the best Indian captain...

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