In 2004, Rahul Dravid was leading India in a Test match in Multan, Pakistan, when he declared the innings with Sachin Tendulkar for 194 runs. This caused an uproar in India. No one in this country considered the game to be bigger than the individual. And Tendulkar! How could Dravid do it? Tendulkar himself sparked controversy by admitting that he had let himself down. The players cleared the air between them, but the fans never got over it.
However, Dravid had a clear in mind. It was a decision based on cricketing logic. India needed to bowl a few overs before the end of the game to win, and in the words of then Indian coach John Wright, Tendulkar, who had slowed down after tea, “needed to move on.”
What was best for the team was not ideal for the individual. In the end India won by an innings and both the players and the country were given a lesson to put the team ahead of the individual. As Wright wrote, it was an affirmation of Dravid’s “steelness and calmness”, as the captain handled the reaction of both his teammates and fans back home with dignity.
interesting statement
Welcoming Dravid as National Cricket CoachIndia’s T20 vice-captain KL Rahul has given an interesting statement. He (Dravid) has always been a team man when he was playing and he wants to bring in a similar culture here where everyone puts the team ahead of individual goals.
It is true, but here is a suggestion that it is not Indian tradition to put the team ahead of the individual. And it’s true too. When KL Rahul recently said during a fiery Test in England, “If you go after one of our players, we’ll all come back eleven,” it was a powerful message. No Indian player of the past would have explained this. This was not the Indian way.
Great players need to be selfish to be successful, eliminating everything that can hinder giving their best. It is a sporting cliche. Usually when the individual is successful, the team does well. But when such selfishness comes in the way, it can backfire. Thus there is positive selfishness which is good for the team, and negative selfishness which is not. An example of the latter is the search for personal records.
Top players trained to be successful at the highest level sometimes find it difficult to switch from positive to negative, especially as fans often put individual achievements above team performance, and thus perpetuate the system.
Some of India’s greatest players have expanded their careers only to surpass a world record or set a record that did not seem possible or necessary until doing so. Kapil Dev completed Richard Hadlee’s then world record total of wickets by the team until he surpassed it. Tendulkar’s pursuit of his 100th international century culminated in personal success when he reached this figure in an ODI, but India lost that match to Bangladesh.
worrying explanation
Another worrying interpretation of KL Rahul’s statement is that there continues to be a culture of negative selfishness in the Indian team, and someone like Dravid will be needed to get rid of it. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But it is a consideration worth keeping in mind. The modern game is highly competitive, and cricket requires the individual to overcome not only eleven members of the opposition, but often some members of their own team as well. It’s not cynical, just practical.
The regrouping of the golden age of Indian cricket (otherwise, the Tendulkar era) is also a matter of importance. Both Dravid and VVS Laxman retired within weeks of each other after a nightmare final tour of Australia in 2012. When Stars retired, he, like all players, was still very young, and still had a lot to contribute to the game.
Within a few years, he had started playing at the national level – this time in different but important roles. with the announcement of Laxman as head of National Cricket Academy (to take over from Dravid who did a commendable job there), his influence on the game continues.
In that great middle-order, Sourav Ganguly is the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, while Anil Kumble has already served as the national coach, and along with Javagal Srinath, held office in the Karnataka State Cricket Association. The transition has been remarkably smooth for these talented, intelligent players, and the end appears inevitable.
,