Not just 'The Wall'

From Alok, India
Dhoni's gotten the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna. Let me come out and say that it is totally undeserved. Why? 1. Only one cricketer so far has gotten it. Sachin Tendulkar. Enough said. 2. Rahul Dravid was not given one, despite being nominated. Twice. It is with the second reason that this post deals with.

No doubt Dhoni is a good cricketer, one who will serve Indian cricket for many years to come. He has recently lead India to a Twenty20 World Cup win and a win in the CB series, a record that is unlikely to be broken ever since this was the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup and the last ever CB series. Yet, Dhoni is but a freshman in world cricket. His Test credentials are yet to be firmly established (he is yet to play the definitive Test innings), and he has just seen his young team lose two one-day series despite being the dominant team in both.

Compare this with Dravid's record. I could let the records speak for themselves, but I think there's more to Dravid than numbers. An Indian Test victory abroad, so rare in the 90s has become a possibility, even a routine occurrence in the first decade of the new millennium thanks to Dravid. There have been other performances of note, no doubt, but the common factor through almost all the victories has been Dravid.

As a captain, Dravid has done what only Ajit Wadekar managed; a Test series win in England and West Indies. In one-day records, he is next only to Sachin among Indian batsmen, and easily among the top five in his generation of batsmen. Yet, he gets unceremoniously dumped from the ODI team. He is constantly the subject of press and public ridicule over his batting style. There seems to be little glamour in glorifying his achievements.

Of the present lot of greats we will remember Laxman for the individual innings of brilliance, Ganguly for his in-your-face-Steve-Waugh captaincy, Kumble for his 10 wickets in an innings against Pakistan, Tendulkar for being, well, Tendulkar, but what will we remember Dravid for? Maybe, and judging from what little we know of his character from his cricket, he will want to be remembered as someone who stood up to be counted every time his country needed him. I think we owe him at least that little.