'Cleaning up Indian cricket is a lost cause' Ramachandra Guha

Social historian Ramachandra Guha can easily cast a spell on the listener with his deep knowledge and his spontaneity. Guha, who was briefly, in 2017, a member of the Committee of Administrators appointed by the Supreme Court of India to oversee reforms in the BCCI, has written a cricket memoir, The Commonwealth of Cricket that traces his relationship with the sport from the time he was four. He says it will be his last cricket book, but as he reveals in the following interview, he will continue his love affair with the game - despite the way it is administered in India. Courtesy Cricinfo

This is your first cricket book in nearly two decades, after A Corner of the Foreign Field was published in 2002. Why did you decide to write it now?
Two things. One, I wanted to pay tribute to my uncle Dorai, my first cricketing mentor and an exemplary coach and lover of the game, who is still active at the age of 84, running his club. I knew at some stage I would like to pay tribute to him.

Paying tribute to people I admire, respect, have been influenced by, is something I have done through my writing career. I have written about environmentalists, scholars, biographers, civil liberties activists. So I also wanted to write about this cricketer [Dorai] who had inspired me.

And I did my stint at the board. That kind of completed the journey from cricket-mad boy through player and writer and spectator to actually being inside the belly of the beast. So I thought that the arc is complete and maybe I should write a book. 

In the book you have defined four types of superstars: 1. Crooks who consort with and pimp for bigger non-cricket-playing crooks. 2. Those who are willing and keen to practise conflict of interest explicitly. 3. Those who will try to be on the right side of the law but stay absolutely silent on […] those in categories 1 and 2. 4. Those who are themselves clean and also question those in categories 1 and 2." Bishan Bedi, you say, is the only one you can think of in that last category. Why is that?
Because he is a person of enormous character, integrity and principle. He never equivocates, he never makes excuses. And he calls it as it is. These kinds of people are rare in public life in India. They are rare in the film world, they are rare in the business world, and virtually invisible in politics. They are rare also in journalism, if you go by the ways in which editors in Delhi, for many years, have been intrigued with politicians, sought Rajya Sabha seats or favours, houses for themselves…

To find someone like Bishan Bedi, who is ramrod straight in his conduct, in any sphere of public life in India today is increasingly rare. He is also an incredibly generous man. When I first met him, at my uncle's house for dinner, he gave a cricket bat to my uncle - because he never wants to take freebies.

Bishan always has given back much more to youngsters he has nurtured. He is very blunt, he is abrasive, like me. He makes enemies because he sometimes says things in an indiscreet or impolite way. But it's really the quality and calibre of his character that compels admiration in me today. When I was young, it was the art and beauty of his spin bowling. Today, it's the kind of man he is. 

You write that the superstar culture "that afflicts the BCCI means that the more famous the player (former or present) the more leeway he is allowed in violating norms and procedures". How does that start?
Your question compels me to reflect on a time when players had too little power. When Bedi once gave a television interview where he said some sarcastic things, he was banned for a [Test] match in Bangalore in 1974. Players had to get more power, they had to get organised, they had to be noticed, they had to be paid properly, which took a very long time. The generation of Bedi and [Sunil] Gavaskar was not really paid well till the fag end of their careers.

But now to elevate them into demigods and icons… one of the things I talk about is [Virat] Kohli and [Anil] Kumble and their rift [Kumble was forced to step down as coach after the 2017 Champions Trophy]. How essentially Kohli had a veto over who could be his coach, which is not the case in any sporting team anywhere.

[MS] Dhoni had decided: I'm not going to play Test cricket. He was only playing one-day cricket. And I said [in the CoA] that he should not get a [Grade] A contract. Simple. That contract is for people who play throughout the year. He has said, "I'm not playing Test cricket." Fine. That's his choice and he can be picked for the shorter form if he is good enough. [They said] "No, we are too scared to demote him from A to B." And more than the board, the CoA, appointed by the Supreme Court, chaired by a senior IAS officer, was too scared. I thought it was hugely, hugely problematic. So I protested about it while I was there. And when I got nowhere, I wrote about it.

Is it the fans who create this culture?
Of course. They venerate cricketers. That's fine. Cricketers do things that they cannot do. It's the administrators who have to have a sense of balance and proportion. And not just with cricketing superstars who are active but also superstars who are retired. Again, to go back to one of the examples I talk about in my book: that [Rahul] Dravid could have an IPL contract, but other coaches in the NCA couldn't. Now, you can't have double standards like this. Cricket is supposed to be played with a straight bat.

It is not Dravid's fault. He just used the rules as they existed for him. It was the fault of the BCCI management that it created this kind of division and caste system within cricketers, within coaches, within umpires, within commentators. It offended my ethical sensibilities. So I protested. 

You recently told Mid-Day that "N Srinivasan and Amit Shah are effectively running Indian cricket today".
It is true.

Are they really running the board?
Yeah, that's my sense. Along with their sons and daughters and sycophants. That's what it is. And [Sourav] Ganguly [the BCCI president] has capitulated. I mean, there are things he should not be doing, given his extraordinary playing record and his credibility, whether he should be practising this shocking conflict of interest. The kind of example it sets is abysmal. I say this with some sadness because I admired Ganguly as a cricketer and as a captain. I'm glad I'm out of it and I'm just a fan again. I can just enjoy the game and not bother about the murkiness within the administration.

Things were meant to change under Ganguly.
Again, I go back to what I said about Bedi: people of principle are rare in any walk of life. And in India, particularly, there is a temptation for fame, for glory, to cosy up to who's powerful. It's very, very, very sad, but it happens. Maybe it's something to do with a deep flaw in our national character, that we lack a backbone in these matters.

In the book, where you address the topic across two chapters, as well as during your tenure in the CoA, you say you were frustrated by how deep the roots of conflict of interest have grown, not just in the BCCI and state associations but also across the player fraternity. Why is it so difficult for both administrators and players, some of whom are former greats, to understand conflict?
Because it's ubiquitous and everybody is practising it. Woh bhi kar raha hai, main bhi karoonga. Kya hai usme? [He's doing it, so I'll also do it. What's the big deal?] It's hard to resist, you know, especially [when] the moral compass of people around you is so low that you just kind of go along with it. 

Sunil Gavaskar is another person who said had multiple conflict of interests.
To Dravid's credit, he saw the point and gave up his Delhi Daredevils contract relatively quickly. He exploited the rules as they were and once I protested and it became public, he realised that he had probably erred and done a wrong thing. Maybe Ganguly could have learned from Dravid in what he's doing now. Cleaning up Indian cricket is a lost cause.

In 2018, the Supreme Court modified its original order of 2016, passed by Chief Justice TS Thakur concerning the Lodha reforms. In 2019, immediately after taking over, Ganguly's administration asked the court to relax key reforms, which would virtually wipe out the reforms. Is it now the responsibility of the court to decisively put the lid on the case?

I'm not losing any sleep. Cricket lovers have to live with a corrupt and nepotistic mode. We should just move on and enjoy the cricket.

In the book, you say you write on history for a living and on cricket to live. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
When I started writing this book, I had just finished the second volume of my Gandhi biography. It's a thousand pages long, inundated with millions of footnotes. And when you write a properly researched work of history, you have to have your sources at hand. So you compile a paragraph, which is based on material you gather, and then you have to scrupulously footnote that paragraph. One paragraph may be drawn from four different sources - a newspaper, an archival document, a book - and you have to put all that in.

Whereas I wanted to write this freely and spontaneously. I could only do that in the form of cricket memoir. So that's how it happened. I wanted a release from densely footnoted, closely argued, scrupulously researched scholarly work. And this came as a kind of liberation.

You call yourself a cricket fanatic. For me, on reading the book, it's the romantic in you that comes to life.
Yeah, I think I am more a romantic than a fanatic. I'm cricket-obsessed. I've been cricket-obsessed all my life, but more in a romantic way; "fanatic" may be slightly wrong because that assumes you always want your team to win. And that's certainly not the case with me anymore.

You write in the book about a fanboy moment you had: "On this evening I did something I almost never do - take a selfie, with Bishan Bedi and the coach of the Indian team, Anil Kumble." Can you recount that incident?
It was the BCCI's annual function. One of the few things I was able to do in my brief tenure at the board was accomplished on that day: to have [Padmakar] Shivalkar and [Rajinder] Goel, two great left-arm spinners, get the CK Nayudu [Lifetime Achievement] Award - the first time a non-Test cricketer had been honoured. And also to have Shanta Rangaswamy get the first Lifetime Achievement Award for Women.

So it was a happy occasion. It was in my home town [Bengaluru]. Bishan had come from Delhi. Kumble was then the coach of the [Indian] team. I know Bishan well and Anil a little bit. I don't know that many cricketers, actually. All these years running about the game, my only friend is really Bishan Bedi, apart from Arun Lal, who was my college captain.

Kumble, of course, would admire Bishan as a kind of sardar [chief] of Indian spin bowling. I saw them and I said I'll take a selfie. What I don't mention is that the selfie was taken by Anil, because he is technologically much more sophisticated than either Bishan or me. He took that selfie very artfully, which I would not have been able to do. It came out nicely. It is the only photograph in the book. 

I am a partisan of bowlers and of spin bowlers. For me, Kumble has always been underappreciated as a cricketer. To win a Test match you need to take 20 wickets. And, arguably, Kumble has therefore won more Test matches than Sachin Tendulkar. As I again say in the book, in 1999, when Tendulkar was about to be replaced as captain, they should really have had Kumble - he is a masterful cricketing mind, but there is a prejudice against bowlers. So in a sense, [the photo was with] someone who was a generation older than me, Bedi, and someone of a generation younger than me, Kumble - both cricketers I admire, both with big hearts, and both spin bowlers, as I was myself.

That's why the caption says: "two great spin bowlers and another" - kind of implying I was a spin bowler, but a rather ordinary one.

Is it true that this possibly could be your last cricket book?
Almost certainly. It would be, because I really have nothing else to say. This is a kind of cricketing autobiography and it has covered a lot. This is my fourth cricket book. I will watch the game. I will appreciate it.

Why don't more Indian cricketers write books?
I think Dravid has a great book in him because he is a thinking cricketer. So might Kumble. But my suspicion is, Kumble will not write a book. Dravid just might. He could write a book called The Art of Batsmanship. Bedi could have written a book because he is an intelligent person. He writes interesting articles, including on politics and public life. By the way, books don't sell. That's another reason. Occasionally, cricketers have thought, I will write a book and I will make Rs 30-40 lakhs (about US$50,000) on it. But cricket books don't really make that much money.

Was Greg Chappell really a terrible coach of India?

Chappell and India. You can't ask for a more compelling plot or cast of characters writes Karthik Krishnaswamy in Cricinfo 

The leaked email, the crowd that cheered the opposition, the punch at an airport: Greg Chappell's tumultuous, two-year tenure as India's head coach contains every ingredient you could wish for if you're writing cricket's version of The Damned Utd, the David Peace novel - later adapted into a movie - that tried to get inside Brian Clough's head during his ill-fated, 44-day spell as manager of Leeds United in 1974.

Chappell and India. You can't ask for a more compelling plot or cast of characters. The coach was one of the game's great batsmen and enigmas, upright and elegant but also cold and sneering, a man who once made his brother bowl underarm to kill a one-day game. This man takes over a team of superstars and attempts, perhaps hastily and certainly without a great deal of diplomacy, to remake them in his own image. He precipitates the removal of a long-serving captain who commands a great deal of adoration within the dressing room, and challenges other senior players to break out of their comfort zones without preparing, perhaps, for the inevitable resistance. There are successes, but there's one massive, glaring failure, and with that the entire project comes crashing down. 

If you wrote it well, there wouldn't be heroes or villains, just the universal story of proud and insecure men trying and failing to connect with each other. But it hasn't usually been told that way, certainly not in India, where Chappell remains a hugely polarising figure.

Of those who played under him, most of the prominent voices who have written or spoken about Chappell have had almost nothing good to say of him - Sourav Ganguly, needless to say, but others too. Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag have all stuck the knife in at various points, and all of them have laid one major charge at Chappell's feet, that he was a poor man-manager.

"Greg," Tendulkar wrote in his book Playing It My Way, "was like a ringmaster who imposed his ideas on the players without showing any signs of being concerned about whether they felt comfortable or not."

Perhaps there's some truth to the idea that Chappell didn't know how to get the best out of a diverse group of players, and that he lacked the instinct to be able to tell whom to cajole and whom to kick up the backside. But while one group of players has been unsparingly critical of Chappell's methods, other prominent voices - Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, and above all Rahul Dravid - have largely stayed silent on the matter. Irfan Pathan has rejected, on multiple occasions, the widely held notion that Chappell was responsible for his decline as a swing bowler after a promising start to his career. Pathan was one of a group of younger players heavily backed by Chappell, alongside Yuvraj, Dhoni (whose leadership potential Chappell was one of the first to spot) and Suresh Raina.

Of course, players are the last people you would go to for a dispassionate appraisal of their coach's ideas and methods. If Chappell wanted Zaheer Khan dropped, you wouldn't ask Zaheer Khan if he thought it was a good idea. You wouldn't ask Harbhajan or Sehwag, two players whose early careers Ganguly had a major influence on, whether it was right to strip him of the captaincy.

Let's look, therefore, at some numbers.

The Ganguly question is the easiest to answer. Chappell put forward the idea that he step down from the captaincy during India's tour of Zimbabwe in September 2005. From the start of 2001 to that point, Ganguly had averaged 34.01 in 61 Test innings against all teams other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

Excluding matches against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the Associates, his ODI numbers in the same period were just as poor: an average of 30.71, a strike rate of 72.32. Since the start of 2003, he had fared even worse against the top eight ODI teams: 1077 runs in 45 matches at an average of 25.04 and a strike rate of 67.39.

There were performance-related issues behind other players' disagreements with Chappell too. Take Khan, for instance. From the end of the Brisbane Test of December 2003, where he bagged a first-innings five-for, to the Karachi Test of January-February 2006, he took 39 wickets in 15 Tests at 42.41. In that Karachi Test and right through that tour of Pakistan, he was visibly pudgy, bowled off a short run-up, and struggled to move the speedometer needle past the 130kph mark.

Khan's fitness - and Sehwag's - had always been a sticking point with Chappell. Left out of India's next two Test series - against England at home and in the West Indies - Khan signed for Worcestershire and enjoyed a tremendous county season, during which he grew fitter and rediscovered his bowling form. He was a rejuvenated force when he returned to Test cricket on the 2006-07 tour of South Africa, and Chappell, writing in his book Fierce Focus, noted that Khan and Ganguly - who was also making a comeback - were two of India's best players on that tour. "Whether they had improved in order to spite me or prove me right, I didn't care. It cheered me greatly to see them in much better shape than they had been when I started in the job."

In ODIs, India were a poor chasing team when Chappell arrived - their last 20 completed chases before he took over had brought them just five wins, four of those against Zimbabwe or Bangladesh - and they realised the best way to become better at it was to keep doing it. They kept choosing to bowl when they won the toss, and eventually became so good at chasing that they won 17 successive matches batting second.

Before Chappell and Dravid joined forces, India had been hugely reluctant to play five bowlers even when conditions demanded it. Under them, it became a routine occurrence. India were lucky, perhaps, to have an allrounder who made it possible, but it's a telling statistic that the highest Pathan batted in 32 ODIs under Ganguly was No. 7, and that was just once, though he scored two half-centuries from those positions and regularly showed promise with the bat. Dravid regularly used Pathan at No. 3, suggesting either that this was his idea in the first place, or that he was far more willing than Ganguly to take on board one of Chappell's. (Pathan himself has suggested it was Tendulkar's idea.)While one group of players has been critical of Chappell's methods, the likes of Dravid largely stayed silent Getty Images

Under Chappell and Dravid, India often played five bowlers in Test cricket too, showing a willingness to risk losing in order to take 20 wickets and win games. It meant leaving out the sixth batsman, and while Ganguly was the first casualty, the rise of Yuvraj and Mohammad Kaif as ODI regulars knocking hard on the Test door put a bit of pressure on Laxman as well. He was left out of two home Tests against England in 2006, and also had to move up and down the order a fair bit, especially if the batsman left out was one of the regular openers.

This led to the insecurities that Laxman has since expressed in his book, 281 and Beyond, and Chappell, perhaps, didn't do enough to allay them. Chappell admits this failing himself in Fierce Focus, calling his mistakes the "same kinds […] I'd made as captain in my playing days. I didn't communicate my plans well enough to the senior players. I should have let guys like Tendulkar, Laxman and Sehwag know that although I was an agent of change, they were still part of our Test cricket future."

That old man-management thing again. But there was nothing fundamentally wrong with asking a senior player to occasionally sit out games or bat in unfamiliar positions, in order to execute a larger plan for the team's good.

Playing five bowlers, being willing to leave out established players, making fitness a non-negotiable, encouraging players to come out of their comfort zones: if the broad ideas of the Chappell-Dravid era, and the tensions that came out of implementing them, seem eerily familiar, it's because you've seen it all happen - though probably allied with better communication - under Ravi Shastri and Virat Kohli. And that, perhaps, is Chappell's biggest legacy.

Great coaches can get entire teams to buy in to their ideas, and even they - as Clough showed, either side of his Leeds misadventure, at Derby County and Nottingham Forest - need to be at the right place at the right time. Chappell and the India of 2005-07 weren't necessarily made for each other, and the early exit from the 2007 World Cup made that relationship untenable. It may not have lasted too much longer than that in any case, given the breakdown of trust within the dressing room that Chappell contributed to with his tendency to air his criticisms of players to the media.

There isn't a huge deal of evidence from the rest of his coaching career to suggest Chappell had the makings of a great coach anyway. But good ideas are good ideas, no matter how well they're communicated, and Indian cricket continues to benefit from the ones he left behind.

‘Superstar culture afflicts Indian cricket,’ writes Ram Guha as he resigns from panel

Dear Vinod,

It has been a pleasure working with Diana, Vikram and you in the Supreme Court Committee of Administrators. It has been an educative experience, spending long hours with three top-flight professionals from whom I have learned a lot in these past few months. However, it has been clear for some time now that my thoughts and views are adjacent to, and sometimes at odds with, the direction the Committee is taking as a whole. That is why I eventually decided to request the Supreme Court to relieve me of the responsibility, and submitted my letter of resignation to the Court on the morning of the 1st of June.

For the record, and in the interests of transparency, I am here listing the major points of divergence as I see it:

1. The question of conflict of interest, which had lain unaddressed ever since the Committee began its work, and which I have been repeatedly flagging since I joined. For instance, the BCCI has accorded preferential treatment to some national coaches (read Dravid) , by giving them ten month contracts for national duty, thus allowing them to work as IPL coaches/mentors for the remaining two months. This was done in an adhoc and arbitrary manner; the more famous the former player-turned-coach, the more likely was the BCCI to allow him to draft his own contract that left loopholes that he exploited to dodge the conflict of interest issue.

I have repeatedly pointed out that it is contrary to the spirit of the Lodha Committee for coaches or the support staff of the Indian senior or junior team, or for staff at the National Cricket Academy, to have contracts in the Indian Premier League. One cannot have dual loyalties of this kind and do proper justice to both. National duty must take precedence over club affiliation.

I had first raised this issue to my COA colleagues in an email of 1st February, and have raised it several times since. I had urged that coaches and support staff for national teams be paid an enhanced compensation, but that this conflict of interest be stopped. When, on the 11th of March, I was told that that there was a camp scheduled for young players at the National Cricket Academy but at least one national coach was likely to be away on IPL work and might not attend the camp, I wrote to you:

No person under contract with an India team, or with the NCA, should be allowed to moonlight for an IPL team too.

BCCI in its carelessness (or otherwise) might have drafted coaching/support staff contracts to allow this dual loyalty business, but while it might be narrowly legal as per existing contracts, it is unethical, and antithetical to team spirit, leading to much jealousy and heart-burn among the coaching staff as a whole. This practice is plainly wrong, as well as antithetical to the interests of Indian cricket.

I would like an explicit and early assurance from the BCCI management that such manifestly inequitous loopholes in coaching/support staff contracts will be plugged.

Yet no assurance was given, and no action was taken. The BCCI management and office-bearers have, in the absence of explicit directions from the COA, allowed the status quo to continue.

2. I have also repeatedly pointed to the anomaly whereby BCCI-contracted commentators simultaneously act as player agents. In a mail of 19th March to the COA I wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

Please have a look at this news report:

http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/pmg-signs-up-shikhar-dhawan-for-3-years-2776329/

Sunil Gavaskar is head of a company which represents Indian cricketers while commenting on those crickters as part of the BCCI TV commentary panel. This is a clear conflict of interest. Either he must step down/withdraw himself from PMG completely or stop being a commentator for BCCI.

I think prompt and swift action on this matter is both just and necessary. COA’s credibility and effectiveness hinges on our being able to take bold and correct decisions on such matters. The ‘superstar’ culture that afflicts the BCCI means that the more famous the player (former or present) the more leeway he is allowed in violating norms and procedures. (Dhoni was captain of the Indian team while holding a stake in a firm that represented some current India players.) This must stop – and only we can stop it.

Yet, despite my warnings, no action has been initiated in the several months that the Committee has been in operation.

As the mail quoted above noted, one reasons the conflict of interest issue has lingered unaddressed is that several of the game’s superstars, past and present, have been guilty of it. The BCCI management is too much in awe of these superstars to question their violation of norms and procedures. For their part, BCCI office-bearers like to enjoy discretionary powers, so that the coaches or commentrators they favour are indebted to them and do not ever question their own mistakes or malpractices. But surely a Supreme Court appointed body should not be intimidated by the past or present achievements of a cricketer, and instead seek to strive to be fair and just.

Conflict of interest is rampant in the State Associations as well. One famous former cricketer is contracted by media houses to comment on active players while serving as President of his State Association (read Ganguly). Others have served as office-bearers in one Association and simultaneously as coaches or managers in another. The awarding of business contracts to friends and relatives by office-bearers is reported to be fairly widespread.

Had we been more proactive in stopping conflict of interest within the BCCI (as per Lodha Committee recommendations, endorsed by the Court), this would surely have had a ripple effect downwards, putting pressure on State Assocations to clean up their act as well.

3. Unfortunately, this superstar syndrome has also distorted the system of Indian team contracts. As you will recall, I had pointed out that awarding MS Dhoni an ‘A’ contract when he had explicitly ruled himself out from all Test matches was indefensible on cricketing grounds, and sends absolutely the wrong message.

4. The way in which the contract of Anil Kumble, the current Head Coach of the senior team, has been handled. The Indian team’s record this past season has been excellent; and even if the players garner the bulk of the credit, surely the Head Coach and his support staff also get some. In a system based on justice and merit, the Head Coach’s term would have been extended. Instead, Kumble was left hanging, and then told the post would be re-advertised afresh.

Clearly, the issue has been handled in an extremely insensitive and unprofessional manner by the BCCI CEO and the BCCI office-bearers, with the COA, by its silence and inaction, unfortunately being complicit in this regard. (Recall that the Court Order of 30 January had expressly mandated us to supervise the management of BCCI.) In case due process had to be followed since Kumble’s original appointment was only for one year, why was this not done during April and May, when the IPL was on? If indeed the captain and the Head Coach were not getting along, why was this not attended to as soon as the Australia series was over in late March? Why was it left until the last minute, when a major international tournament was imminent, and when the uncertainty would undermine the morale and ability to focus of the coach, the captain and the team? And surely giving senior players the impression that they may have a veto power over the coach is another example of superstar culture gone berserk? Such a veto power is not permitted to any other top level professional team in any other sport in any other country. Already, in a dismaying departure from international norms, current Indian players enjoy a veto power on who can be the members of the commentary team (read departure of Harsha Bhogle). If it is to be coaches next, then perhaps the selectors and even office-bearers will follow?

5. Ever since the Supreme Court announced the formation of the COA, we have been inundated, individually and collectively, by hundreds of mails asking us to address various ills that afflict Indian cricket and its administration. While many of these issues were trivial or clearly beyond our purview, there was one concern that we should have done far more to address. This concerns the callous treatment to domestic cricket and cricketers, namely, those who represent their state in the Ranji Trophy, the Mushtaq Ali Trophy, and other inter-state tournaments. The IPL may be Indian cricket’s showpiece; but surely the enormous revenues it generates should be used to make our domestic players more financially secure? There are many more Indian cricketers who make their living via the Ranji Trophy than via IPL; besides, for us to have a consistently strong Test team (especially overseas) we need a robust inter-state competition and therefore must seek to compensate domestic players better.

And yet, shockingly, Ranji match fees have remained at a very low level (a mere Rs 30,000 odd for each day of play); moreover, cheques for match fees sent by the BCCI are sometimes not passed on by the state associations to the players. We need to learn from best practices in other countries, where domestic players are awarded annual contracts like those in the national team, while their match fees are reasonably competitive too.

Several months ago, the experienced cricket administrator Amrit Mathur prepared an excellent note on the need for better and fairer treatment of domestic players. Both Diana and I have repeatedly urged action, but this has not happened.

6. I believe it was a mistake for the COA to have stayed silent and inactive when the Supreme Court judgment was being so flagrantly violated by people clearly disqualified to serve as office bearers of state and even BCCI run cricket bodies. The disqualified men were openly attending BCCI meetings, claiming to represent their state association, and indeed played a leading role in the concerted (if fortunately in the end aborted) attempt to get the Indian team to boycott the Champions Trophy. All these illegalities were widely reported in the press; yet the COA did not bring them to the notice of the Court, and did not issue clear directions asking the offenders to desist either.

7. I believe that the lack of attention to these (and other such issues) is in part due to the absence of a senior and respected male cricketer on our Committee. Allow me to quote from a mail I wrote on 1 February 2017, before our first full meeting:


Dear fellow members,

I much look forward to meeting you all later today. I know Vikram already and greatly admire both Vinod and Diana for their remarkable work in their chosen fields, and am truly honoured to be working with them as well.

I presume apart from discussing IPL, etc, with the BCCI representative we will get some time to discuss the way forward separately. I have several ideas which I wish to share with you about our collective responsibility, and wanted in this mail to flag what is most important of these. This is that we must incorporate into our committee of administrators, either as a full member or as a special invitee, a senior male cricketer with the distinction and integrity that Diana has. That will greatly enhance both our credibility and our ability to make informed decisions.

The absence of a respected male cricketer in the COA has attracted a great deal of criticism already, much of it from important stakeholders in Indian cricket. It must be addressed and remedied. The amicus curae had suggested two outstanding names, Venkat and Bedi, both of whom were rejected because they were over seventy. However, there are some cricketers of the right age and experience who fit the bill. Based on my knowledge of the subject, I would say Javagal Srinath would be an excellent choice. He is a world-class cricketer, was a successful and scandal-free Secretary of the Karnataka State Cricket Association and is an ICC match referee, and comes from an educated technical background to boot. I strongly urge the Chairman and the other members to consider approaching him in this regard. He would complement Diana perfectly, and the combination of these two respected and top class former cricketers would enhance our credibility and effectiveness enormously.

While Srinath is in my view the best choice, there are other alternative names too. I hope we can set aside some time at our meeting to discuss and resolve the issue.

With regards
Ram

p.s. Needless to say, I have not discussed this with Srinath or with anyone else.

I raised this issue in a formal meeting of the COA as well, but unfortunately my proposal to invite a senior male cricketer to join the committee was not acted upon. We should have approached the Court to take necessary action, or else incorporated a senior, respected, male cricketer as a special invitee. With such a person on board the COA would have gained in experience, knowledge, understanding, and, not least, credibility. Indeed, had we such a person on board, the BCCI management and the office-bearers would have been compelled to be far more proactive in implementing the Lodha Committee recommendations than they have been thus far. As the only cricketer on the COA, Diana’s contributions have been invaluable; on many issues of administration and the rights of players she has brought a perspective based on a first-hand experience that the rest of us lacked. A male counterpart would have complemented and further enriched her contributions; but perhaps it is not too late to make amends.

8. While all our meetings were held in a cordial atmosphere, between meetings perhaps there was not adequate consultation, and there were several crucial decisions made where all the COA members were not brought into the loop. For instance, a capable, non-political Senior Counsel representing the COA and the BCCI in the Supreme Court was abruptly replaced by another Senior Counsel who is a party politician. Surely other COA members should have been consulted by email or by phone before this important change was made.
I have taken too much of your time already, but permit me to make one last suggestion. This is that the place vacated by me on the Committee of Administrators be filled by a senior, respected, male cricketer with administrative experience.

Let me in conclusion thank you for your courtesy and civility these past few months, and wish you and the Committee all the best in your future endevours.

With best wishes

Ramachandra Guha

On Batting - Why the perfect technique is the one that disappears

The various acts that are involved in playing cricket well happen best intuitively, when we aren't consciously perfection in them

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

October 27, 2014

 

The key to batting could be described as being not so much about watching the ball as getting in sync with it, matching the rhythm of the shot with the arrival of the ball © AFP

Last weekend I was chopping firewood with an axe in my garden. The trick, obviously, is to land the blade of the axe in roughly the same part of the trunk every time. Each accurately aimed blow widens a V-shaped wedge, until, eventually, you cut through the whole tree. If you're inaccurate, you end up stabbing the trunk and messily scarring the firewood.

I was surprised by what I noticed. When I concentrated intently on the spot I was aiming for, when I tried to be precise and particular, I was in fact quite clumsy. But when I merely casually noted the target and focused more on the rhythm of the swing and the naturalness of the motion, I found that the axe landed in exactly the right spot. In fact, every single "good swing" - by which I mean something lazy, fluid, languid, with the weight of the blade being first unweighted then dropping almost casually - ended in hitting the target.

Accuracy was best served not by trying to be accurate, but by a sense of rhythm. Precision was achieved not by seeking it but by absorption in free, uninhibited (but not wild or uncontrolled) movement. When I tried to force the axe to go exactly where I wanted, it rarely did. When I allowed myself to work with the axe, it cooperated.

Eventually I realised this is exactly like batting.

We talk too much about "watching the ball", as though straining to identify the target is always the answer. (This is my second article challenging central tenets of the coaching manual - the first took issue with the "head still" theory.) In fact, a batsman can watch the ball too anxiously, to the point that the process inhibits his response to the ball. Instead, we have to be alert to the ball, to get in sync with it, to match the rhythm of the shot with the arrival of the ball. And these things happen best intuitively, when we aren't consciously pursuing them.

This is not a new idea. It was articulated by the golfer James Baird in 1914. He criticised players who fixate with desperate intensity on the point of impact. Instead, in a good swing, "The dispatching of the ball from the tee by the driver in the downward swing is merely an incident of the whole business [my italics]." A few years ago, I chatted about golf with Colin Montgomerie at Gleneagles. He took a few swings exactly as Baird suggested: the ball was almost incidental, a momentary obstacle in the natural movement of the club. The swing happened, the ball just got in the way.

That is not always easy, especially in cricket, when the ball is moving. I've never liked the cliché that cricket is "a simple game". All taken together, the art of batsmanship is very complex - the tension between attack and defence; the balance between protecting against lbws and yet not opening up the edge to the slips; the ability to transfer weight decisively forward and back; sustaining concentration, switching on and off.

And yet most batsmen would agree that when they're doing it well, batting feels simple and natural, sometimes even easy. Bowling is the same. Every fast bowler I've known, when asked why he was able to bowl so fast and well on a particular day, tends to answer, "Because I had good rhythm." I've not heard one bowler yet reply, "Because I tried harder and thought more intently."

The best coach I worked with would sometimes stand behind the nets with his eyes closed. He'd listen to the bowler's steps arriving at the crease, the noise of the batsman's footwork, the thud of the ball on the turf, and finally the crack of leather on willow. "That was good," he'd say, "you had rhythm." Or sometimes, "No, you had no touch, no finesse." All with his eyes closed, or with his body turned away from the net. And he'd be right, every time. The coach was able to distinguish between the right process (an open and uninhibited mindset, a lack of predetermination, a natural swing of the bat) and the outcome of the shot in narrow terms. He knew that if you play a high enough proportion of good shots, the runs will inevitably follow.

	Because the important things are hard to coach, it is tempting to take refuge in the small, irrelevant things because they are easy

There is a mystical element here. By crudely reducing things in the hope of "explaining them", we often simply distort them. Batting is not like rummaging around in a bag of machinery, looking for a pre-moulded tool. Instead, it is the ability to answer a question posed by a particular ball - batting as a form of conversation. As every ball is slightly different, so is every good shot. As Roger Federer put it brilliantly, "I need a different point every time."

In elite sport we overstate the importance of trying hard. After all, players are highly incentivised to do well (money, glory, fame - need we go on?). Conversely we hugely underestimate the value of achieving that sense of lightness and freedom - the feeling I had swinging the axe, and, sometimes, when I was swinging a cricket bat. There is truth in the cliché: "You learn about batting when you've already scored a hundred." What you learn is how good you could be if you learned always to trust yourself, to play free from restraints and anxiety, without the suffocating influence of what Arsene Wenger calls "handbrake-age".

The question follows, obvious but very rarely addressed: how can we make batting and bowling feel easy more often, given that is the feeling we get when we are doing them well?

First, we misunderstand technique. Technique is not a thing, an object that can be owned. It is a means. The goal is not technique but to hit the ball sweetly. Technique allows us to do it better, to achieve that goal more often and completely. For that reason, the perfect technique is the technique that disappears: it is no longer in the way. We are not conscious of it at all. We track the ball, swing the bat in rhythm, and everything else organises itself intuitively.

Secondly, we overstate the value of rational intelligence and analysis. I am not sure that the subject of this article can be "coached" in the conventional sense of the word. Coaches can help you to understand the process, perhaps even help you get there more quickly. But, at best, the coach can only support and enable a journey that the player must undertake on his own.

Because the important things are hard to coach, it is tempting to take refuge in the small, irrelevant things because they are easy. Too much bottom hand, getting squared up, playing too early, closing the face of the bat? All symptoms, but unlikely to be the ultimate cause. That is probably much simpler and yet harder to put right: the bat isn't working as part of your body but in opposition to it.

As the literary critic Steven Connor wrote about tennis: "If I wish the racket to become me, I must first become it, or become the kind of me that it requires and will most readily respond to."

-----Rahul Dravid on playing spin as quoted by Bryon Coverdale from Pietersen's book

One of the most fascinating passages in Kevin Pietersen's recent autobiography relates not to which team-mates he dislikes or how badly he was treated, but to advice given to him by Rahul Dravid on how to play spin. It is worth seeking out the book just to read the email Dravid sent. Australia's batsmen should certainly read it.

Dravid advises soft hands, be prepared to come forward but do not overcommit, let the ball come to you, recognise there are scoring opportunities off the back foot too. He suggests a novel training method, telling Pietersen he should face Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar in the nets while not wearing pads.

"When you have no pads it will force you, sometimes painfully, to get the bat forward of the pads and will force you to watch the ball," Dravid writes. "Also the leg will be less keen to push out without any protection. My coach would tell me you should never need pads to play spin!!"

Two South Indian gentlemen

Farewell: Dravid and Laxman

 

Rahul Bhattacharya

	Laxman and Dravid "dissolved into one another more harmoniously, more significantly, than any other Indian duo" © AFP  Enlarge

"Nusrat singing, Laxman and Dravid batting - TV on mute, and yoga." A note from an acquaintance in Mumbai had this description of his perfect day. Rahul Dravid and V. V. S. Laxman marked their Test debuts within six months of one another in 1996 with accomplished half-centuries. Sixteen years later they announced their retirements in accomplished press conferences, also within six months of each other. But this note came not on the occasion of a batting feat or a retirement. It was, in Indian shorthand, an ode to long-form cricket - and the pair that most profoundly summoned its sensation.

Consider the correspondent's other passions. A partnership of Laxman and Dravid could contain both the incantatory rapture of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the meditative discipline of yoga. One might say Laxman was the rapture and Dravid the discipline, but that would not only be partially false, it would be to miss the point. The beauty of a jugalbandi, a duet between classical soloists, is in the interplay. A jugalbandi is a duet in the same way as a batting partnership: not simultaneous, but one performer at a time, in improvisatory rotation. The great sitar player Ustad Vilayat Khan said the idea was to both showcase and subdue oneself. As he hands over to his partner, the artist must judge how much to dissolve the tune. Dravid and Laxman dissolved into one another more harmoniously, more significantly, than any other Indian duo.

Separately, theirs were brilliant careers. Dravid's was colossal. He played 164 Tests, faced more deliveries than anyone in history (31,260), and made more runs (13,288) than all but two. He became the first man to 200 catches, most of them snaffled at first slip. For a supposed misfit in one-day internationals, he still racked up over 10,000 runs at nearly 40. Though he enjoyed neither, he kept wicket or opened the innings with courage and competence, whenever needed. In a tumultuous stint as captain, he oversaw a first-round World Cup exit and Test series victories in the West Indies and England.

Laxman, who when picked for India still hadn't ruled out returning to medical studies to become a doctor like his parents, scored close to 9,000 runs in 134 Tests. Against Australia, the premier team of the era, he struck ten sublime international centuries, including one that may just be the greatest innings in all cricket. Like Dravid, he caught well at bat-pad, then in the slips. Sometimes vice-captain, he was seen by younger team-mates as the avuncular bridge between generations. They called himmama, or uncle. These are the bare facts.

Part of their harmony was that Laxman and Dravid were similar and dissimilar in equal measure. They were both from southern India - Laxman from Hyderabad, Dravid from Bangalore - and were both gentlemen (south Indians will think this a tautology). Raised on matting wickets, they enjoyed bounce and back-foot play. They were tall, wristy, hit the ball along the ground, and possessed what cricket watchers refer to as "temperament".

For all that, they could give off very different impressions: Dravid seemed to care a little too much, Laxman not enough. This may be because Dravid perspired heavily and tended to grimace, whereas Laxman looked always a serene stroller in pleasant climes. It may be because Dravid committed himself to sincere footwork, whereas Laxman (against pace) trusted his hands and the curvy abstractions of what he once told me was his "bat flow".

Sporting impressions are rarely false. It's just that sportswriters, like cartoonists, exaggerate the features. As with David Gower, the game looked easy in Laxman's lovely hands. He was Goweresque in only that respect. He was not to be spotted swooping in a biplane over his team-mates, or sozzled at an official reception. He was a diligent man, who worked all career at ironing out any incriminating casualness from his strokes; a religious man, who can quote verses from the Bhagavad Gita, and in the early years could be seen muttering a prayer (to the saint Sai Baba) as he faced up.

Meanwhile Dravid, given to over-intensity, honed relaxation into a fine art. Before matches, he willed himself away from self-torture through video analysis and training sessions, to long lunches, long sleep, and slow living. Waiting to bat, he watched the game only briefly. He was no contest, it is true, for Laxman, who was fond of showering when the man before him went in, and thereafter might be found lying under a table listening to music on headphones.

When his turn arrived, Dravid strode out briskly to the centre. On certain days, with chest and arm guards in place, his back erect and knees high for a man with pads, it could be said he marched out. Laxman appeared sometimes belatedly, somewhat gingerly (bad knees), with a pacific, Mona Lisa quasi-smile, and collar turned up in the Hyderabadi way. At the crease they were calm, immersed in their work like artistes. They were happy to bat for hours, days. Occasionally Dravid responded to sledging, though in an upstanding kind of manner. Laxman seemed not to notice at all. While fielding in the slips they talked to each other, Dravid told journalist Nagraj Gollapudi, "about kids, house construction, plumbers, electricians, running errands".

The mammoth partnership has usually been the preserve of those in successive batting positions. Only seven pairs in Test history have put together two or more triple-century stands, as Dravid and Laxman did. These have been either openers - Herschelle Gibbs and Graeme Smith - or batted close together: Bill Ponsford and Don Bradman, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf, Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke. But Dravid and Laxman batted at opposite poles of the middle order, at first drop and fourth. Three-hundred-and-something runs for the fifth wicket suggests more than appetite: it suggests valour.

Valour was scarce in the times we refer to. To understand Indian cricket at the turn of the century, consider the sequence: clean-swept in Australia, clean- swept at home by South Africa, the resignation of a deflated captain (Sachin Tendulkar), the naming of the previous captain (Mohammad Azharuddin) and several players in a match-fixing scandal. To passionate fans, cricket felt desperate; to others, it felt wholly discredited.

Kolkata, 2001: it was a day short of the Ides of March. But the 14th was no less portentous for Australia's Caesar, Steve Waugh. On that day two years previously, a beleaguered West Indies side had risen again in Kingston: from 37 for four overnight, Brian Lara and Jimmy Adams batted almost all day and overturned a series. Australia had advanced since, revivified by the phenomenon of Adam Gilchrist, the tank-sniper combination of Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, and Waugh's own ruthless ambition. Forget losses: they barely did draws. Going into Kolkata they had racked up a world record 16 straight Test wins. The latest of those was a three-day demolition of India in Mumbai. And in Kolkata, a quartet of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Michael Kasprowicz and Shane Warne had bowled Australia to a 274-run lead.

	Kolkata 2001: "batting, and batting, and more beautiful batting" © AFP  Enlarge

The rest is an Indian fairytale: Laxman the last man out in the first innings for a dashing 59, asked to keep his pads on by his captain and the coach, swapping positions with a struggling Dravid in the follow-on, the two coming together in the second innings with Laxman almost upon his century but India still behind Australia's first-innings total.

And then the batting, and batting, and more beautiful batting, over a short evening, the whole of March 14, and then some more. Laxman curling the ball through imperceptible gaps, Dravid regaining lost form through pure unblinking will, Laxman now flick-pulling the fast bowlers as if tossing frisbees, now driving them on the rise, sinuous jabs that raced improbably across the big green outfield, Dravid now blocking, now shouldering arms, now leaning back to cut, the old sureness slowly redeveloping, Laxman inside-outing Warne miraculously from far outside leg stump, now whipping him against the turn, Dravid, fully restored, emboldened to come down the track himself and wrist Warne across his break, all of this in the huge sound and growing belief of a hundred thousand in Eden Gardens, an energy that must be experienced to be understood.

Laxman batted ten and a half hours for 281. Dravid was run out for 180 after nearly seven and a half. Together they put on 376. These were runs made in some discomfort: Laxman had been listing, much like a ship, and his back had to be realigned by the physio during the intervals; Dravid, battling the high humidity of Kolkata and his own rate of perspiration, cramped with dehydration. Around their necks both wore strips of towel drenched in ice-water, and they returned to a dressing-room installed with drips. India won the Test, magically, then the series. If a virtue of sport is to make a people cast aside their troubles, not by fantasy but aspiration, here it was.

Three seasons on, the Indian team were finding their way in the world - but not yet in Australia. At Adelaide, they were 85 for four, trailing by 471, doomed to a ritual humiliation. Despite the absence of Warne and McGrath, the task didn't look hard: it looked hopeless. India hadn't won a Test in Australia for 23 years. Of the 26 Tests that Steve Waugh had captained at home, Australia had won 21 and lost one (a dead rubber in the 2002-03 Ashes). Soon the familiar chemistry between our like-and-unlike couple began to galvanise into something close to inevitability.

Here, Dravid played the lead. He was back at No. 3, and in the form of his life. The previous year he had hit Test centuries in four successive innings, three of them in England, including a defensive tour de force at Headingley. Sunny Adelaide allowed him to be more expansive. His handsomest stroke, the front-foot drive through cover, he repeatedly demonstrated, bending low on his left knee like a skater and letting his arms arc out. Astonishingly, he brought up his century with a miscued pull - for six. He even surprised himself when, late in the collaboration, he looked at the scoreboard to find he had outscored his partner. "Yeah, jeez, not bad for a blocker, huh?" he told the sportswriter Rohit Brijnath.

This time they put on 303: Laxman 148, Dravid 233. In a neat inversion, as Laxman had set up Kolkata with a first-innings fifty, here Dravid anchored a hard fourth-innings chase with 72 not out. When he cut the winning runs to the boundary, Waugh made a point of retrieving the ball from the gutter and handing it over. Waugh retired after the series, and to write a foreword to his autobiography he invited Dravid, a much younger man who had once sought him out to ask how to take his game to a higher plane.

There was much more to Dravid and Laxman than these two partnerships - and also, of course, often much less. Laxmanophiles were bewildered that a batsman of his calibre should average so far below 50, appalled (and secretly charmed) by his running between the wickets, and plain frustrated when the ball seamed about and he poked to slip; against England he averaged 30. Likewise, Dravid partisans could try to construct defences for his unflattering averages against Australia and South Africa, the best bowling attacks of the time - but how to enjoy his most tuneless offerings, the 16-off-114-balls variety, except by wilful perversity? (Dravid, who had not just the cussedness but also the humour to perpetrate these innings, once raised his bat to applause from an Australian crowd after a single.)

Indians place on a pedestal the twin epics because of what they were, and also because of their associations. To think of Dravid's 233 at Adelaide is also to think of his monumental 270 in Rawalpindi, 148 at Headingley, or 93 at Perth - all setting up ground-breaking overseas victories. To think of Laxman's Kolkata masterpiece is also an oblique tribute to its younger brothers: from late 2010 alone, extraordinary fourth-innings chases against Australia and Sri Lanka, and a third-innings 96 in Durban when nobody else in the match touched 40.

Team success cannot and should never be a necessary or a sufficient condition for a cricketer's accomplishments, but in the Indian instance it felt urgent. The Indian side of the 2000s was up against a history of flickering achievement amid lethargic underperformance. Of the batting line-up instrumental in overturning that history, Dravid was the spine and Laxman the nerve. Their runs were tough, elegant and vital. Their manner was classic. The echoes of Kolkata and Adelaide rang down the decade, in far-flung venues and memories, and in notes from cricket watchers to one another.

Rahul Dravid

by Mukul Kesavan

Exactly 11 years ago, down to the month, Rahul Dravid was playing second lead in India's greatest-ever Test victory, the second match of the three-Test series against Steve Waugh's all-conquering Australians. He scored 180; VVS Laxman, the hero of this Boy's Own Paper spectacular, scored 281. Together they won India the match (with some help from Harbhajan Singh and Sachin Tendulkar on the bowling front) but once again Dravid had been Robin to someone else's Batman, best man in the ironic sense of being the bridegroom's chief aide. 

The innings was a landmark in Dravid's cricketing life: it marked the end of the first phase (the first third, to be precise) of an extraordinary Test career. Dravid made his debut in England in 1996 and had by 2001 built a reputation as the anchor of India's batting line-up and its second-best batsman. If this had merely meant being shaded by Tendulkar, the greatest batsman of his generation, it might have been acceptable; what galled Dravid's admirers was that he was sometimes outshone by lesser men.

In his debut series in England, it was Sourav Ganguly, a fellow debutant, who took the honours with two centuries. Dravid missed his hundred on debut by five runs at Lord's and then scored an eighty in the next Test; it wasn't till his ninth Test that he scored his first hundred. At the end of 1998, after two and a half years of Test cricket and 24 Test matches, Dravid had two centuries, one of them against Zimbabwe. He had done enough to signal that he was a first-rate prospect and a fearless player of quick bowling, but the big, decisive innings eluded him regularly: eight times in this period he managed to get into the eighties and nineties without going on to score a hundred. He was in some danger of becoming a nearly-man.

Even after he hit his century-making stride with two centuries in a drawn Test in New Zealand and it became clear that he was India's greatest holding batsman since Sunil Gavaskar, others seemed to make the running in the team. Ganguly took over as captain when Tendulkar stepped away from the leadership reckoning, and Laxman's purple patch with the bat had people briefly wondering if the baton of batting greatness was to skip the intake of '96 and pass from the Little Master to a younger man.

You could see the pressure on Dravid that day in Kolkata, when Ganguly promoted Laxman, as the form batsman, to Dravid's No. 3 spot in the interests of the team. Dravid came in at No. 6 when the game seemed lost, and, as always, did what was best for the side: he held the line with Laxman till a lost position became a winning one. Unusually for him, when he got to his hundred he let the press-box sceptics know that he was still around. It was a turning point; having played a supporting role in the greatest Indian batting partnership of all time, he was about to come into his own.

For the next five years he was, by some distance, the best batsman in the team: better than Laxman, better than Virender Sehwag, better than the great Tendulkar. As batsman and as captain he helped India win Test series overseas in Pakistan, in the West Indies and in England. He was, for those years, Indian batting's Batman. His innings in Leeds and Adelaide were amongst the greatest ever played by an Indian abroad, and they were played in a winning cause. Through those glory years, he wasn't the Wall, he was what Gavaskar had been for the Indian team 30 years before, its bastion and its siege engine.

	Steadfast elegance is an unlikely quality, a contradiction in terms. It was Dravid's great achievement throughout his career to fuse those virtues in his person

Dravid's extraordinary success in this middle period of his career (towards the end of this phase his batting average was just under 59) needs attention not just because it helped India's cause; it is important because it offers us an alternative template for batting greatness. Greatness in batting, specially in the last 20 years, has been associated with masterful aggression: Lara, Tendulkar, Ponting. In the same period, Dravid (along with Jacques Kallis) showed us masterfulness of another sort: great defensive batting put to winning ends. Dravid's originality as a batsman needs an essay to itself; suffice to say that by melding Gundappa Viswanath's wristy genius with Gavaskar's monumental patience and poise, he became that remarkable and original creature: a stylish trench-warrior. 

The last third of his career saw an initial dip and then a remarkable return to form. The last three years were an autumnal golden age that should have ended with those three heroic centuries in England last summer. Never had Dravid's great qualities - courage, endurance, team spirit and technical excellence - been better showcased than in that late sunburst of genius and generosity. Generosity because here was a man being asked to open the batting for a broken team at the age of 39, a batting position he had always detested, and he complied without demur and with surpassing success.

Steadfast elegance is an unlikely quality, a contradiction in terms. It was Dravid's great achievement throughout his career to fuse those virtues in his person. To remember the wreckage amidst which he battled in a forlorn cause last summer, surrounded by unfit, unsound, feckless team-mates, is to know, with fear, what Indian cricket has lost with his retirement.

He played one series too many. It wasn't his fault; given his form in England, the challenge of an Australian tour, and the sort of hand he had always played for India overseas, he had to go. When he failed on that disastrous tour, along with the rest of India's old guard, he was, inevitably, the first to pack it in.

It is a retirement freighted with more meaning than merely the end of an individual career. Rahul Dravid was an old-fashioned cricketer: he was a Test match batsman who was great without being glamorous, brave without being brash. He was, if you like, the polar opposite of Virat Kohli, Indian cricket's new poster boy. When this honourable man called it a day, middle-aged fans across the subcontinent shivered: they felt a goose walk over Test cricket's grave. 

-------------

by Sambit Bal

It's hard not to feel a bit emotional today. Journalism has instilled in us the discipline of detachment, but it feels impossible at this hour to separate Rahul Dravid the cricketer I have watched from afar from the man I have come to know to a degree of proximity. 

The last time I felt this way about a retirement was when Sunil Gavaskar went in 1987. I was merely a fan then, and it was through Gavaskar, my first hero, that I related to cricket. I felt personally cheated that his departure came without a warning. It left me with an emptiness that I dreaded I would never fill, and a gnawing feeling that I might never be able to feel about the game the same way again. Of course I was wrong.

Dravid's retirement doesn't come as a surprise. If you knew him, you ought to have expected it. The manner of his departure bears the stamp of the man: not for him the fanfare of a build-up to a farewell Test, the showmanship of a final doffing of the hat, or the milking of emotions.

He wouldn't be human if he hadn't wished for a better finish than an airy, un-Dravid-like waft far away from body that carried to ball into the lap of gully, but he was mature and pragmatic to accept that fairytale endings are a matter of chance: it would have been futile trying to wait for one or to try to manufacture one.

But though it feels right that Dravid should go this way, it's hard to feel uninvolved. Take this as a declaration of interest: with Dravid I strayed from the unwritten code of journalism of never befriending a subject.

It's not that I cultivated a friendship with him deliberately. It developed organically over the years, over phone calls about the occasional pieces he has written for us, over meals on tours, over chats about parenting and books, over shared thoughts and interests. That none of it has ever felt wrong has been down to the kind of person he is.

There are qualities about him that are naturally attractive. I remember the first time I spoke to him. It was in the second half of 2002. I was editing Wisden Asia Cricket, a fledgling magazine, and we were putting together a special issue on Sachin Tendulkar, who was due to play his 100th Test that September. I was unsure of what to expect. I had a small budget and I was determined to keep editorial pages free of sponsor logos. I was prepared for him to turn me down, but I dreaded having to deal with an agent.

Dravid was friendly over the phone. He heard out the brief, asked about word-count and deadline, and said yes. I offered to have someone call him and take the piece down, but he was clear that he wanted to write it himself. The question of a fee didn't come up. It was unprofessional of me not to have specified it, but I had been embarrassed to make an offer.

The piece turned up on the appointed date, more than a thousand words long, well-structured, thoughtful, with a touch of humour, and not a comma out of place. He later told me he had had it cleaned up by a friend, which I found even more impressive. He cared. We sent him a cheque, and he did write a few more pieces for us the following year, but the real motivation, I was to learn later, was to test himself at something different.

Indian cricket has been blessed in the last couple of decades with a group of exceptional cricketers who have conducted themselves with the kind of dignity that sometimes escapes celebrities. I have the good fortune to know some of them. Sachin Tendulkar's humility is not a posture; contrary to his on-field image, Sourav Ganguly is unfailingly courteous and charming; VVS Laxman has an endearing simplicity and a smile that reaches the eyes; and with Anil Kumble, there is a refreshing directness.

Dravid has many of these qualities. But there is something else. There is a normalcy about him that is almost abnormal. There are public figures who go out of their way to put you at ease, but the effort is palpable. Dravid does it just by being himself. There is no affectation and artifice to it. Not that he is unaware of his stardom or is falsely modest about his achievements, but he can step outside all that and connect with the world at a real level.

It's almost as if he leaves that part of his world behind him when he leaves the cricket field. And perhaps that's why he can see the cricket world from the outside, reflect on it objectively, and see the ironies and futilities of stardom. It's a rare and remarkable quality. It has helped him engage in relationships in the outside world without baggage.

And it made him one of the rare cricketers a journalist could afford to be friends with without compromising on professionalism. Through the years, our relationship has never been hostage to what was written about him on ESPNcricinfo under my watch. You could write about a poor performance or a poor run of scores from Dravid without worrying about his response, because you knew that unless it was malicious or patently false, he wouldn't hold it against you.

But for someone who rarely cared what was written about him, I found it baffling that he fretted so much about being misunderstood: the perception that despite being fairly accessible to the media he rarely articulated his thoughts and concerns about Indian cricket.

	I asked if he regretted not having retired in England. His response was a further revelation of character. He would certainly have retired if he hadn't had a good series, he said, but after doing so well, retiring would have been selfish. There was a series to be won in Australia, and he owed it to the team to make the trip

He argued that he had his reasons. He once was a guest on a Time Out show with Harsha Bhogle and Sanjay Manjrekar, and while discussing India's younger players he wondered whether, even though many of them said the right things about Test cricket, they had an all-consuming desperation for it, given that they had other avenues. He went on specify that he wasn't worried about the Suresh Rainas and the Rohit Sharmas, but the ones who came after them. By that evening it was being reported that Dravid had accused Raina of being uninterested in Test cricket.

It remained my belief that players needed to take more ownership of the game, and one of most effective ways of doing it is to take stands on issues that mattered. That's why Dravid's Bradman Oration was impressive, not merely for its erudition but for confronting some of cricket's major challenges head-on.

Little were we to know that it would turn out to be his finest performance on his final tour.

Retirement has been on his mind for over a year now. We spoke about it during India's tour of South Africa in 2010. He dreaded the idea of lingering on past his time and was mindful of not standing in the way of younger players. Cheteshwar Pujara, to many the ideal successor to Dravid, had made an impressive debut in Bangalore and had taken India to victory with a confident fourth-innings half century, batting, incidentally, at No. 3.

But Pujara had already found a place in the team, and for Dravid the idea of a final series in England, where his Test career had started, and where Test cricket remains the most celebrated form, became appealing. With hindsight, nothing would have been more perfect than signing off after the hundred at The Oval. Even the most hopeless optimist wouldn't have forecast a better series for him in Australia.

When we spoke a couple of weeks ago, I asked if he regretted not having retired in England. His response was a further revelation of character. He would certainly have retired if he hadn't had a good series, he said, but after doing so well, retiring would have been selfish. There was a series to be won in Australia, and he owed it to the team to make the trip. And no, there were no regrets. He would do it no other way, even if offered a second chance.

There should be no sadness about his going. He will be remembered not for his last Test series, where he found every conceivable way to get bowled, but for an extraordinary body of work, for always putting his team first, for honouring the best traditions of the game, for impeccable behaviour in public life, and for being the perfect role model to his peers.

In the list of Indian batting greats, he will rank just behind Gavaskar and Tendulkar. For what his performances helped his team achieve, he is perhaps matchless. Barring his final hundreds in England, it's hard to recall a great Dravid innings that didn't either set up a win or help save a Test.

For me the man will always be even more special. Tendulkar said yesterday that there can never be another Rahul Dravid. He perhaps meant the cricket. But it would be far tougher to find a man like him in the Indian dressing room again. In his retirement the side hasn't merely lost a man who could be counted on to stand up at the toughest times, but also a bit of its character.

His friendship counts among the most cherished rewards of my life as a cricket journalist. The cricketer will be missed, but the man will be around.

---------

Statistical Analysis on Dravid's batting

by S Rajesh

The stat that perhaps best sums up Rahul Dravid is not the runs he made or the the hundreds he notched up, but the number of balls he consumed over a Test career that spanned fifteen-and-a-half years. In 286 Test innings, Dravid played 31,258 balls. Given that no other batsman has faced more than 29,000 deliveries, it puts into perspective the amount of hard work and sheer effort that went into scoring those 13,288 runs. There were other batsmen who had more natural talent, and were more elegant, aggressive, and exciting to watch. In terms of dedication to craft and working on achieving perfection, though, Dravid ranks second to none. That dedication fetched him just rewards, ensuring he scored runs in every country he played in, and finished his Test career as the second-highest run-getter, next only to Sachin Tendulkar. 

From the time he scored 95 in his first Test innings against England at Lord's, it was clear he was an exceptional batting talent, but even so, not many would have envisaged a career that spanned 164 Test matches and 344 one-day internationals. His maiden Test century, a sparkling 148 against a tough South African attack in Johannesburg, further confirmed his class, and from there it has been a journey of several highs, interspersed with - as every career must have - its share of lows.

For most of his career, consistency was one of Dravid's fortes. For instance, of the first ten series that he played in (excluding one-off Tests), he averaged more than 40 in seven of them. His best phase, though, was the four-year period from the middle of 2002 to 2006, a stunning spell when he scored heavily pretty much everywhere he went: in 16 series during this period, 13 times he averaged more than 49, and nine times over 75. More importantly, he scored those runs in tough batting conditions, and in overseas Tests that led to wins abroad, a phenomenon that till then had been pretty rare in Indian cricket. During this period, his overseas average was an exceptional 77.07.

A slump followed, almost inevitably, from the middle of 2006 to 2008, when he struggled in South Africa, England, Australia and Sri Lanka. There was talk, inevitably again, that Dravid should quit Tests, but in his last three years he came out of that slump pretty well. He was among the runs in New Zealand, West Indies, and - in what must rank as arguably his best series, given the lack of batting support - in England in 2011, when he fought the England pace attack almost singlehandedly, scoring 461 runs at 76.83. His last series was admittedly a huge disappointment, but despite that he averaged more than 52 in his last 33 Tests.

Rahul Dravid's Test career

Period	Tests	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s	Home ave	Away ave
Till Mar 31, 2002	55	4329	50.92	9/ 24	48.91	53.20
Apr 2002 - Jul 2006	49	4720	68.40	14/ 22	55.71	77.07
Aug 2006 - Dec 2008	27	1460	31.06	3/ 7	31.60	30.66
Jan 2009 onwards	33	2779	52.43	10/ 10	75.31	42.54
Career	164	13,288	52.31	36/ 63	51.35	53.03

At home overseas

As mentioned above, perhaps the most significant aspect of Dravid's Test career was that the runs he scored contributed significantly to India's wins, mainly overseas. Overall, Dravid scored 5131 runs in Test wins, next only to Tendulkar's 5594. However, in overseas Test wins, he was often India's main man, even more than Tendulkar. India won 15 Tests abroad during Dravid's career (excluding matches in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe), and in those games he scored 1577 runs at 65.70 - both aggregate and average is higher than Tendulkar's.

Quite fittingly, Dravid was Man of the Match in the last overseas Test win that India achieved during his career - his second-innings 112 and match tally of 152 were largely instrumental in India winning a low-scoring game in Kingston by 63 runs. In all, eight of his 11 Man-of-the-Match awards came in overseas Tests, and five in overseas wins, including unforgettable performances at Headingley (2002), Adelaide (2003), Rawalpindi (2004) and Kingston (2006). Tendulkar won only five out of his 14 Man-of-the-Match awards overseas, and only one in a win (excluding Bangladesh). In fact, no Indian has won as many match awards overseas as Dravid has. (Remember, though, that this award wasn't always around during the days of some of India's earlier players.)

As well as helping India win overseas, Dravid also scored mountains of runs in draws overseas, averaging more than 75 in those matches, with ten centuries in 32 Tests. Two of those hundreds were in the drawn game in Hamilton in 1999, one of two times he scored a century in each innings of a Test. In fact, he is one of only three Indians to achieve this feat - Sunil Gavaskar and Vijay Hazare are the others.

Indian batsmen in overseas* Tests, in wins and draws

Batsman	Won Tests	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s	Drawn Tests	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s
Rahul Dravid	15	1577	65.70	4/ 7	32	3083	75.19	10/ 17
Sachin Tendulkar	13	1219	60.95	5/ 3	42	3484	71.10	11/ 18
VVS Laxman	14	1111	52.90	2/ 8	26	1931	58.51	4/ 14
Virender Sehwag	11	965	56.76	3/ 1	15	1386	57.75	4/ 4
Sunil Gavaskar	9	756	50.40	3/ 3	30	2697	64.21	9/ 12
Sourav Ganguly	9	617	51.41	1/ 5	21	1601	59.29	5/ 8
Gundappa Viswanath	6	533	53.30	2/ 3	19	1040	40.00	2/ 8

* Excluding Tests in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe

No. 1 at No. 3
India didn't always have the luxury of solid opening pairs through his career, which made Dravid's presence at No. 3 all the more important. He is the only batsman at the moment to have scored more than 10,000 runs at that position, and he did it at a superb average too, scoring close to 53 runs per dismissal. At No. 3, though, his home record was better - he averaged 54.81 in India, and 51.35 abroad. In overseas Tests excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, his average at No. 3 fell marginally below 50, to 48.75.

Highest run-getters at No. 3 in Tests

Batsman	Innings	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s
Rahul Dravid	219	10,524	52.88	28/ 50
Ricky Ponting	196	9904	56.27	32/ 43
Kumar Sangakkara	158	8702	58.79	27/ 36
Don Bradman	56	5078	103.63	20/ 10
Richie Richardson	107	4711	47.11	14/ 21
Rohan Kanhai	90	4689	52.68	13/ 20
David Boon	111	4412	45.58	13/ 20
Ian Chappell	91	4279	50.94	13/ 22

Dravid's stats at No. 3 sorted by the score at which he came in to bat present some interesting numbers. He averaged only 38 when the first wicket fell with ten runs or fewer on the board, but on the 18 occasions when the first wicket fell at zero, he averaged 51.94, with three centuries and as many fifties. In fact, his highest Test score, 270, came when he came out to bat second ball, after Virender Sehwag had fallen to Shoaib Akhtar off the first ball of the innings in Rawalpindi. He also had plenty of success when he came in to bat fairly early, with the score between 11 and 20. The 148 at Headingley in 2002 came after the first wicket fell for 15, while the 217 that followed in the next Test, at The Oval, was scored after the first wicket fell at 18.

He obviously relished coming in to bat after the openers had given the team a solid start. On the 66 occasions when they added more than 50, Dravid averaged 62.41. Among his key knocks in such situations was the 233 in Adelaide in 2003 - that match-winning effort came after the openers had added 66.

Dravid at No. 3 by point-of-entry scores

Point of entry	Innings	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s
10 or below	66	2322	38.07	4/ 12
11 to 20	45	2482	60.54	7/ 9
21 to 50	42	1913	53.14	4/ 11
51 and above	66	3807	62.41	13/ 18

Staying through partnerships

Dravid's ability to spend long periods at the crease meant bowlers had to invariably work hard to get his wicket. On an average, he played 123 balls per dismissal, which works out to 20.3 overs. Since the year of his debut, the only batsman who has faced 10,000-plus deliveries and has a higher rate of balls per dismissal is Jacques Kallis, who averages 125.55 balls per dismissal. They're the only two batsmen with a balls-per-dismissal figure of more than 120. Further down the table below, Tendulkar and Kumar Sangakkara have similar numbers: both have higher averages than Dravid, but their higher scoring rates also mean they don't play as many deliveries per dismissal.

Highest balls per dismissal in Tests since Jan 1996 (Qual: 10,000 balls faced)

Batsman	Innings	Not outs	Balls faced	Average	Strike rate	Balls per dismissal
Jacques Kallis	253	39	26,867	57.28	45.62	125.55
Rahul Dravid	286	32	31,258	52.31	42.51	123.06
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	221	33	21,365	48.79	42.93	113.64
Thilan Samaraweera	114	20	10,497	53.42	47.84	111.67
Steve Waugh	137	21	12,705	53.06	48.45	109.53
Gary Kirsten	143	14	13,841	47.19	43.98	107.29
Sachin Tendulkar	256	25	23,781	56.22	54.61	102.95
Kumar Sangakkara	179	12	17,191	55.97	54.37	102.94

Dravid's ability to spend long periods at the crease obviously meant his contribution to the team was much more than just the runs he scored. His solidity at the top of the order allowed the other, more extravagant, strokeplayers in the Indian team to express themselves freely, knowing that Dravid would hold his end up for long periods without losing concentration.

The table below shows that when Dravid was at the crease, the team scored 32,039 runs (60 of those runs were in the Test between Australia and the ICC World XI, so 31,979 runs were scored by the Indian team). Given that the entire Indian team scored 89,668 runs, it means 35.6% of the total runs that India made in Tests involving Dravid were scored with him at the crease. The corresponding percentage for Tendulkar is 29.9, and 32.6 for Kallis. Dravid is also the only batsman to be involved in more than 700 partnerships; in fact, no other batsman has even touched 650 so far.

Every time Dravid walked out to bat, he was involved in, on an average, 2.58 partnerships. Among batsmen who've played at least 100 innings, only Shivnarine Chanderpaul has a higher partnerships-per-innings number (2.66). So, while Dravid scored heaps of runs himself, his batting style also meant many more runs were being scored from the other end while he was around, all of which helped the team's cause.

Partnership runs for batsmen with 10,000-plus Test runs

Batsman	Partnerships	P'ship runs	100/ 50 stands	Batsman runs	Percentage
Rahul Dravid	738	32,039	88/ 126	13,288	41.47
Sachin Tendulkar	646	30,278	85/ 121	15,470	51.09
Ricky Ponting	496	26,703	85/ 110	13,200	49.43
Jacques Kallis	578	26,107	64/ 119	12,260	46.96
Allan Border	617	24,500	63/ 104	11,174	45.61
S Waugh	590	23,457	64/ 87	10,927	46.58
Brian Lara	508	21,495	62/ 84	11,953	55.61
Sunil Gavaskar	519	21,080	58/ 85	10,122	48.02
Mahela Jayawardene	420	20,635	63/ 78	10,086	48.88

Dravid has also been involved in more century stands than any other batsman: he finishes at 88, with two other current players about whom there has been plenty of retirement talk - Tendulkar and Ponting - on 85 each. Dravid is also the only batsman to have ten or more century stands with four others; no one else has even managed three. And with Tendulkar, Dravid scored more partnership runs and century stands than any other pair, including openers: 6920 runs in 143 partnerships at 50.51, with 20 century stands.

Batsmen involved in most 100-plus stands in Tests

Batsman	Century stands	Partners with 10+ century stands
Rahul Dravid	88	Tendulkar (20), Laxman (12), Sehwag (10), Ganguly(10)
Ricky Ponting	85	Hayden (16), Langer (14)
Sachin Tendulkar	85	Dravid (20), Ganguly (12)
Jacques Kallis	64	de Villiers (12)
Steve Waugh	64	-
Allan Border	63	-
Mahela Jayawardene	63	Sangakkara (14), Samaraweera (10)
Brian Lara	62	Sarwan (12)
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	60	-
Sunil Gavaskar	58	Chauhan (11), Vengsarkar (10), M Amarnath (10)

Beyond the batsman

And if all those achievements as a batsman are not enough, Dravid was captain of the Indian Test team for 25 Tests, a period during which the team had an 8-6 win-loss record, and won series in West Indies and England. Among Indian captains who led in 20 or more Tests, only MS Dhoni and Sourav Ganguly have a better win-loss ratio.

Indian captains with best win-loss ratio (Qual: 20 Tests)

Captain	Tests	Win/Loss	Draw	W/L ratio
MS Dhoni	37	17/ 10	10	1.70
Sourav Ganguly	49	21/ 13	15	1.61
Rahul Dravid	25	8/ 6	11	1.33
Sunil Gavaskar	47	9/ 8	30	1.12
Mohammad Azharuddin	47	14/ 14	19	1.00

And on the field, he snaffled a record 210 catches, mostly in the slips. That was another aspect of the game where his immense powers of concentration stood him in good stead.

There's plenty to like about Rahul Dravid's Test career. The one aspect that's disappointing, though, is his record against Australia and South Africa, arguably the two best bowling sides during his playing period. His poor final series in Australia meant his overall average against them dipped below 40 (38.67), while against South Africa he averaged only 33.83. Thus, in 54 Tests against those two teams, he averaged 36.75 with only four hundreds; in 27 Tests in those two countries, he averaged 36.53, with only two centuries. He never scored another Test hundred in South Africa after that 148 in Johannesburg in 1996-97, while the 233 in Adelaide remained his only Test hundred in Australia. Those, though, are minor blips in a career that largely stayed at an exceptionally high level through more than 15 years.

---------
 by Vijeta Dravid

I've been married to Rahul for almost nine years now and we have always been very private people. So I'm sure he will be astonished to find that I have written at length about him.

This is not meant to be a song of praise for him on his retirement; that is up to the rest of the world. I am his wife, not a fan, and the reason I am writing this is to give you an insight into the role cricket has played in his life, and to take that in for myself at the end of his 16-year international career.

Just after we got married, I remember him saying to me that he hoped to play for "the next three or four years", and that he would need me there to support him in that time. Now that he has retired, I think: "Not bad. We've done far better than the three or four years we thought about in May 2003."

The last 12 months were special for us for more reasons than the runs or centuries Rahul has scored. After the 2010-11 tour of South Africa, our older son, Samit, suddenly developed a huge interest in cricket. When he watched Rahul score his centuries in England last year, it was as if in the last year of his career, Rahul had found his best audience.

I was with the boys at Old Trafford when Rahul played his first (and last) Twenty20 international and then also travelled to every match of the one-day series. After the last ODI, we went into the Lord's dressing room and showed Samit and Anvay their baba's name on the honours board. It was a huge thrill for the boys to see Rahul play live in front of so many people, to see him at his "work", which kept him away from them for months.

Cricket has been the centre of Rahul's world and his approach to every season and series has been consistent in all the time we have been married. Methodical, thoughtful and very, very organised. When I travelled with him for the first time, in Australia in 2003-04, I began to notice how he would prepare for games - the importance of routines, and his obsession with shadow practice at odd hours of day or night. I found that weird. Once, I actually thought he was sleepwalking!

Now I know that with Rahul's cricket, nothing is casual, unconscious or accidental. Before he went on tour, I would pack all his other bags, but his cricket kit was sacred - I did not touch it; only he handled it. I know if I packed only two sets of informal clothes, he would rotate them through an entire tour if he had to and not think about it. He has used one type of moisturising cream for 20 years because his skin gets dry. Nothing else. He doesn't care for gadgets, and barely registers brands - of watches, cologne or cars. But if the weight of his bat was off by a gram, he would notice it in an instant and get the problem fixed.

Cricket has been his priority and everyone around him knows that. On match days Rahul wanted his space and his silence. He didn't like being rushed, not for the bus, not to the crease. All he said he needed was ten minutes to himself, to get what I call his "internal milieu" settled, before he could go about a match day.

When we began to travel with the kids - and he loved having them around during a series, even when they were babies - we made sure we got two rooms. The day before every game, the boys were told that their father had to be left alone for a while, and Rahul would go into his room for his meditation and visualisation exercises. On the morning of the game, he would get up and do another session of meditation before leaving for the ground. I have tried meditation myself and I know that the zone he gets into as quickly as he does - it takes lots of years of training to get there. It is part of the complete equilibrium he tries to achieve before getting into a series.

Like all players, Rahul has his superstitions. He doesn't try a new bat out for a series, and puts his right thigh pad on first. Last year before the Lord's Test, he made sure to sit in the same space Tillakaratne Dilshan had occupied in the visitors' dressing room when he scored nearly a double-hundred earlier in the season. Rahul scored his first hundred at Lord's in that game.

	If I packed only two sets of informal clothes, he would rotate them through an entire tour if he had to and not think about it. He doesn't care for gadgets, and barely registers brands - of watches, cologne or cars. But if the weight of his bat was off by a gram, he would notice it in an instant and get the problem fixed

Once the game is on, at the end of every day he has this fantastic ability to switch off. He may be thinking about it, his batting may bother him, he will be itching to go back and try again, but he can compartmentalise his life very well. He won't order room service or brood indoors, he would rather go out, find something to do - go to a movie or watch a musical, which he loves. He will walk out to the sea to wind down or go to bookstores, or find something else to do.

He has dealt with all that goes on in cricket because he can separate the game and the rest of his life and put things in perspective. No matter what was happening in his cricket, at home he is husband, father, family man. He has never said, "Oh I've had a bad day." He wouldn't speak about his work unless asked. Other than dropped catches.

Only once, I remember, he returned from a Test and said, "I got a bit angry today. I lost my temper. Shouldn't have done that." He wouldn't say more. Many months later, Viru [Sehwag] told me that he'd actually thrown a chair after a defeat to England in Mumbai. He'd thrown the chair, Viru said, not because the team had lost but because they had lost very badly.

One of Rahul's great strengths is his ability - and he has had it all along - to accept reality. He believes you cannot complain about anything because there is no end to complaining. And he knows there is no end to improving either. He always looks within, to gain, to learn and to keep working at his cricket.

In the last few years he worked doubly hard to make sure he played the game in his best physical condition in the toughest phase of his career physically. He tried to understand his body and work on his limitations - he was able to hold off shoulder surgery despite a problem in his rotator cuff because he found ways to keep it strong. When I was pregnant with Samit, we spent two months in South Africa to work in a sports centre that focused on strengthening Rahul's shoulder. Because he sweats profusely, he has even had sweat analysis done, to see how that affects his batting. He found that Pat Rafter, the former Australian tennis player, had a similar problem.

To get fit, he went on very difficult protein diets for three months at a stretch, giving up rice, chapatis and dessert altogether - even though he has a sweet tooth. He wanted his batting and his cricket to benefit from his peak fitness, even heading into his late 30s. He has been to see a specialist in eye co-ordination techniques, for eye exercises for the muscles of his eyes. If there was a problem, he always tried to find answers.

Outside cricket, Rahul is a man of no fuss. If he's on a diet, he will eat whatever is served, as long as it fits the diet. Even if the same food keeps turning up on his plate for days in a row, he will eat it without complaint. If he drops a catch, though, it bothers him enough to talk about it on the phone when we speak in the evening; during matches, it is the only part of cricket that he will talk about without me asking him about it. In 2009 he lost his old, faded India cap, when it was stolen from a ground. He was very, very upset about it. It was dear to him and he was extremely proud to wear it.

People always ask me the reason for Rahul being a "normal" person, despite the fame and the celebrity circus. I think it all began with his middle-class upbringing, of being taught to believe in fundamental values like humility and perspective. He has also had some very old, solid friendships that have kept him rooted.

He is fond of reading, as many know, and has a great sense of and interest in history of all kinds - of the game he plays and also of the lives of some of the world's greatest men. When he started his cricket career, he had a coach, Keki Tarapore, who probably taught him to be a good human being along with being a good cricketer.

All of this has given Rahul a deep understanding of what exactly was important about his being in cricket and what was not. It can only come from a real love for the game. When I began to understand the kind of politics there are in the game, he only said one thing: that this game has given me so much in life that I will never be bitter. There is so much to be thankful for, no matter what else happens, that never goes away.

	Dravid with Vijeeta and Samit after the victory in the Johannesburg Test in 2006 © AFP Enlarge

Cricket has made Rahul who he is, and I can say that he was able to get the absolute maximum out of his abilities as an international cricketer.

What next for him? I know he likes his routine and he's in a good zone when he is in his routine, so we will have to create one at home for him. Getting the groceries could be part of that. A cup of tea in the morning for his wife would be a lovely bonus, I would think, particularly now that he doesn't have to take off for the gym or for training at the KSCA at the crack of dawn.

More seriously, though, I think he will spend time relaxing and reading to let it all sink in a bit. He has loved music and wants to learn how to play the guitar. Then perhaps he would like to find something that fills in at least some of the place that cricket occupied in his life, something challenging and cerebral.

Rahul has lived his dream and he thinks it's time to move on. Retirement will mean a big shift in his life, of not have training or team-mates around him, or the chance to compete against the best. The family, though, is delighted to have him back. 

Vijeeta has been married to Rahul Dravid for nine years. They have two sons

© ESPN EMEA Ltd.

------

Ed Smith

When Rahul Dravid walked into the dressing room of the St Lawrence ground in Canterbury on a cold spring morning, you could tell he was different from all the others. He did not swagger with cockiness or bristle with macho competitiveness. He went quietly round the room, shaking the hand of every Kent player - greeting everyone the same, from the captain to the most junior. It was not the mannered behaviour of a seasoned overseas professional; it was the natural courtesy of a real gentleman. We met a special human being first, an international cricketer second. 

The cricketer was pretty good, too. Dravid joined Kent for the 2000 season, and I spent much of it at number four, coming in one after Dravid (not that he was the departing batsman very often). That meant I had some wonderful opportunities to bat alongside the player who became the highest scoring No. 3 of all time.

What did I learn? I learnt that real toughness takes many different forms. Dravid could appear shy and slightly vulnerable off the pitch; in the middle, you sensed a depth of resilience. Many overseas players liked to set themselves apart from the county pros - as though they had to swear more loudly and clap their hands more violently to prove that international cricketers were tougher than the rest. Not Dravid. He never paraded his toughness - it emerged between the lines of his performances. Instead, he always talked about learning, about gathering new experiences - as though his cricketing education wasn't complete, as though there were many more strands of his craft to hone. His journey, you could tell, was driven by self-improvement.

One word has attached itself to Dravid wherever he has gone: gentleman. The word is often misunderstood. Gentlemanliness is not mere surface charm - the easy lightness of confident sociability. Far from it: the real gentleman doesn't run around flattering everyone in sight, he makes sure he fulfils his duties and obligations without drawing attention to himself or making a fuss. Gentlemanliness is as much about restraint as it is about appearances. Above all, a gentleman is not only courteous, he is also constant: always the same, whatever the circumstances or the company.

In that sense, Dravid is a true gentleman. Where many sportsmen flatter to deceive, Dravid runs deep. He is a man of substance, morally serious and intellectually curious. For all his understatement, he couldn't fail to convey those qualities to anyone who watched him properly.

	He was restrained in celebration, just as he was restrained in disappointment - exactly as the true gentleman should be. And yet his emotional self-control co-existed with fierce competitiveness and national pride

I last bumped into Dravid late last year at a charity dinner at the Sydney Cricket Ground. He was the same as he always has been - warm, self-deprecating, curious about the lives of others. As ever, he made a point of asking about my parents - their health and happiness - although he has never met them. Family and friendship, you sense, are central to his life and his values.

In the q&a that followed his speech, one answer got close to the core of his personality. What motivated him still, after all these years and so many runs? Dravid said that as a schoolboy, he remembered many kids who had at least as much desire to play professional cricket as he did - they attended every camp and net session, no matter what the cost or the difficulty of getting there. But you could tell - from just one ball bowled or one shot played - that they simply didn't have the talent to make it. He knew he was different. "I was given a talent to play cricket," Dravid explained. "I don't know why I was given it. But I was. I owe it to all those who wish it had been them to give of my best, every day."

What a brilliant inversion of the usual myth told by professional sportsmen: that they had unexceptional talent and made it to the top only because they worked harder. Dravid spoke the truth. Yes, he worked hard. But the hard work was driven by the desire to give full expression to a God-given talent.

On the field, what set Dravid apart was a rare combination of technical excellence, mental toughness and emotional restraint. He was restrained in celebration, just as he was restrained in disappointment - exactly as the true gentleman should be. And yet his emotional self-control co-existed with fierce competitiveness and national pride.

Dravid has single-handedly disproved the absurd argument that tantrums and yobbishness are a sign of "how much you care" or, worse still, "how much you want it". Dravid was rarely outdone in terms of hunger or passion. And he was never outdone in terms of behaviour or dignity. Those twin aspects of his personality - the dignified human being and the passionate competitor - ran alongside each other, the one never allowed to interfere with the other. He knew where the boundaries were, in life and in cricket.

I am an optimist by nature. I do not think that sport is perpetually declining from some mythical golden age. But sometimes I cannot avoid the sense that a certain type of sportsman is an increasingly endangered species. I have that feeling now, as Dravid declares his innings closed. No longer will he take guard with that familiar hint of politeness, even deference. No longer will he raise his bat to the crowd as if he is genuinely thanking them for their applause - the bat tilted outwards in acknowledgement of the supporters, not just waved frantically in an orgy of personal celebration. No longer will he stand at first slip, concise and precise in his movements - a cricketer first, an athlete second. No longer will the high Dravid back-swing and meticulous footwork link this generation with the great technicians of the past.

It would be nice to argue that no cricketer is irreplaceable, that sport is defined by continuity rather than full stops, that there will soon be another Dravid, another champion cricketer of timeless steel and dignity. But I don't think there will be. I think Dravid will be remembered as the last in a great tradition of batsmen whose instincts and temperament were perfectly suited to Test match cricket. It is not an exaggeration to say that a whole strand of the game - a rich vein that runs through the game's poetic heart - departs the scene with India's greatest ever No. 3. Playing Twenty20 cricket won't teach anyone to become the next Rahul Dravid.

In years to come, perhaps too late, we may realise what we have lost: the civility, craft and dignity that Dravid brought to every cricket match in which he played

-----

by Aakash Chopra

	Rahul Dravid: not a natural off-side player © Getty Images Enlarge
Related Links

I still fondly recall that brisk summer evening in Australia in early 2004 - we'd levelled the series for first time in that country. Rahul Dravid, my senior, my hero, sat next to me in a rather cheery dressing room, and I hesitantly, anxiously probed him about my batting, hoping to get his two-cents. And he, as always, was eager to help. Besides the many things that I picked up from him that day, the one that really stuck was the first step towards greatness - his honesty and humility. 

Dravid, in his classic self-effacing way, had confessed to being, for most part, an on-side player. The bowlers had come to know of his strengths and had stopped feeding him on his legs. He had to find another way to score runs, he admitted. Which was how he became one of cricket's outstanding off-side batsmen.

That was an overwhelming revelation for me - what seemed like Dravid's second nature was in fact practised and perfected. Just a few days ago he'd stunned everyone with his stupendous double-century in Adelaide. This was an innings punctuated by an array of breathtaking cover drives, piercing the smallest of gaps with surgical precision. How could one believe that his impeccable off-side play didn't come naturally to him, after all?

It was only my second series for India, but Dravid had already become my go-to man, my mentor, with regards to both technical and temperamental queries. His confession had been in response to my concern about my inability to score big runs despite getting good starts - he didn't have to expose the chinks in his armour, but he did. To be simple is to be "great".

Years later that chat with Dravid made me go back and search for videos of his batting during the early part of his career. I wanted to know if the confession had just been an attempt to pep me up. What I found out made me respect Dravid, the man and the batsman, even more.

When he started out, Dravid used to crouch a lot more in his stance, with his head falling over a bit towards the off side. His bat, coming from the gully region, forced him to make a huge loop at the top of the backlift. Both the backlift and the falling head allowed him to punish anything that was even marginally on his legs. His wide backlift also made him a good cutter of the ball, provided there was width on offer. On the flip side, it meant fewer front-foot strokes on the off side. In fact, mid-off was rarely brought into play. During one of our recent chats, Dravid said that because he grew up playing on jute matting wickets, he became a good back-foot player and also strong on the legs, for the bounce allowed him to work the balls, even the ones pitched within the stumps, towards the on side. He was a bottom-hand dominated player, he said.

	For him, change didn't just mean survival. It also meant the maturity to create endlessly. While he intentionally worked on his trigger movement and playing beside the line, things like his stance - which was more upright in the latter half of his career - and the straighter descent of the bat happened unconsciously over the period

The knowledge of where his off stump was, coupled with immense patience, ensured Dravid continued to score bucketful of runs in Test cricket, in spite of the bowlers finding him out. Runs were coming but not as briskly as he would have liked. He had to spend a longer time at the crease to accumulate those runs, which eventually cost him his place in the ODI set-up. He needed to find ways to open up his off-side play. That's when he chose not to get behind the line of the ball at all times while also starting to use the top hand a lot more.

An ardent follower of the Gavaskar school of batting, Dravid, in the beginning, would go back and across before the ball was bowled, and then further across to get behind the line of the ball. While this method worked well in Test cricket, it needed some tinkering to suit the shorter format. So, instead of going back and across, he preferred going back and back to ensure he stayed besides the ball more often, which allowed him to free his arms while playing through the off. These tweaks were successful and Dravid went on to play his finest cricket in that period.

There's something about batting that is so addictive. Whenever you think you have mastered your biggest shortcoming and can breathe easy, something else unwanted creeps into your system. While the back-and-back trigger movement worked really well for Dravid, his front foot started going a bit too across. The movement across the stumps allows you to cover the swing a little better but it also blurs your judgement of lines, with regard to deciding which deliveries to play and which to leave alone.

Mitchell Johnson, with his line that goes across the right-hander, forced Dravid to play at deliveries he would have left alone if his front foot had not gone so far across. And uncharacteristically, Dravid got out - fishing outside the off stump - on more than a few occasions.

Once again, the challenge was to find a solution to this latest technical glitch.

Dravid's answer was to completely eliminate the trigger movement and stay perfectly still till the bowler released the ball.

Now, it may sound like a simple adjustment, but a batsman will tell you that it is perhaps the toughest one to make. Even though the movement occurs before the ball is bowled, and is only a few millimetres, it's as important as the movement after the ball is bowled. The trigger movement sets the body in motion and allows it to get into right positions after the ball is bowled. Eliminating the trigger movement is like engaging the fifth gear right after turning on the ignition. The catch is that it will not work if you are constantly thinking about not moving. The only thing you should be thinking about while standing is your response to the delivery.

Even though it must have taken hundreds of hours of practice to get it into his system, so as to make it absolutely seamless, Dravid went through the grind. Nothing great was ever accomplished without passion.

Dravid went on to have the best Test series of his career, in England in 2011. He was not only getting runs but was also extremely fluent.

Yet this adjustment meant he didn't have a second line of defence, which meant that if he got beaten he'd get bowled and not trapped leg-before. And that's what happened in Australia.

	Dravid eliminated the trigger movement to open up his off-side play but it made him susceptible to getting bowled © Getty Images Enlarge

Dravid, all along, had been well aware of the risks involved. But it was a gamble he was ready to take; he gave something to get something in return. Much hullabaloo was made of Dravid's dismissals in Australia - as if being bowled was dishonourable. Getting dismissed essentially means getting beaten by a bowler. What difference does it make whether one is bowled, lbw or caught behind?

Knowing Dravid, he would have found ways, yet again, to address this slip and would have continued to play successfully. For him, nothing was unachievable. And perhaps that's what made Rahul Dravid the most evolved cricketer of this era. For him, change didn't just mean survival. It also meant the maturity to create endlessly. His desire for growth was intense enough to work on both conscious and unconscious levels: while he intentionally worked on his trigger movement and playing beside the line, things like his stance - which was more upright in the latter half of his career - and the straighter descent of the bat happened over the period.

In cricket, like in life, it is not the most talented who survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change. Dravid's career was an eternal quest to get better. Everything he did was to, as he puts it best, "deliver the bat at the right time".

----

Interview

 

It has been a fortnight since Rahul Dravid retired and already the world has turned upside down. First, he couldn't grab a helicopter to beat the Bangalore morning traffic to get to the interview on time. Then he couldn't take his eyes off a large glass jar of what looked like multi-coloured sweets (jelly beans? M&Ms?), grabbing a few on his way out of the coffee shop at the Leela Palace. (Ya-boo to you, skinfold tests.) And finally, this otherwise studious, decorous and meticulous man is completely relaxed about the fact that the last leg of his playing career will pan out in front of an adoring, singing, dancing IPL audience, for whom "dot ball" might as well belong to children's activity books and "well left" is a Google Maps instruction.

Just before setting out for his stint with the Rajasthan Royals, Dravid gave his first interview after retiring from international cricket, where he looked back on his career, the way ahead for the Indian team, and taking the hard road to retirement.

	"After England I felt I was in good form and that I needed to go to Australia, and I felt that it was going to be a tough tour and that it wouldn't be right to walk away after doing well in England" © Getty Images Enlarge
Related Links News : 'I have never stopped trying' News : Next generation more capable than me - Dravid Players/Officials: Rahul Dravid | Virat Kohli Teams: India

How does a player pick the right time to retire? How did you? What's the different between a slump and a sign that your time is up? What separates doubt from foresight?
It's actually very hard to tell if there is such a thing as a right time. All your career, you're taught to never never give up. You're fighting, you keep improving, you always think you can sort out problems. I never thought about going out on a high or going out on a slump. A lot of people told me: "You will just know, Rahul, when the time is right." Obviously there are other things that come into consideration. Where you are in your life, where the team is at that point of time, what the future challenges are, how you fit into that. Even if someone doesn't tell you, you've been around long enough to know where you stand. There are the immediate challenges of tours like Australia and England, which you think are tough, and you want to try go there and make a difference.

In the end it just comes down to knowing and being comfortable with it. And I just think, while I had been thinking about it, I was most comfortable doing it at this stage. If things had not gone well in England, maybe I would have been comfortable doing it then. Obviously after England, I felt I was in good form and that I needed to go to Australia, and I felt that it was going to be a tough tour and that it wouldn't be right to walk away after doing well in England… it may sound silly, but just wanting to finish on a high - that hadn't occurred to me, in the sense that I wanted to go when I was comfortable.

There was a period in 2008, the end of 2008, when I was really struggling and not getting runs, and there was a lot of talk of me being dropped. If I had been dropped at that stage, I would've still continued to play first-class cricket. Not in the intention of trying to make a comeback - I know that if I had got dropped at 36 or 37, the likelihood of me making a comeback would have been very slim. I wouldn't have played for wanting to make comeback, but because I still wanted to just play the game. It was a game I loved and I still loved enjoying playing it. I probably would have continued playing Ranji Trophy at that stage. And how long that would have lasted, who knows.

But to end a career with the IPL?
In some ways it's like a weaning-off period. Playing cricket has been such a big part of my life, so to just walk away might have been hard. Some of the senior guys who've retired and played the IPL say the IPL's a good way, in some ways, to slowly wean yourself off the drug that is cricket.

What do you assess when making a decision to retire?
It's a combination of things. The important thing to remember is how much are you contributing. That's a major factor. As you get older these things do come in, and that's why I said that England for me… it was important for me to keep contributing.

After actually retiring, did you ever think: what if this is a mistake?
I think the best question someone asked me about this retirement thing is Eric Simons. I called him up and said, "Eric, I'm retiring." And Eric said, "When you made that decision, Rahul, did you feel relief or did you feel disappointment?" And I had never thought about it that way. It was a feeling of relief and I did feel it. I've not regretted it.

I've lived this life for 20 years. I haven't regretted it and I hope it won't regret it, and I still can have a Twenty20 bash. I guess it's only in June, when I'll sit down and the Indian team will play another Test match again - I don't know, I might miss it. We miss a lot of things. We miss college, everyone wants to go back to Uni and live that life again, but you know that's not possible. Hopefully you move on. You will know that there are other things to do and other challenges.

What about international cricket won't you miss it, apart from the travel and being away from family?
In a cricket career your life is in some ways controlled for you. You have no control over schedules, you have no control about where you want to play, you don't have control over that as a cricketer. I think while I'll miss the routine and knowing what to strive for, I think I'll enjoy the flexibility of being able to make some choices about things I want to do. I'll enjoy the luxury of now having that choice.

What is it about life after cricket that you think a player fears the most?
Each one has his own fears, when it's something you've done all your life. And when it's the only thing that you've known, it's almost like starting out fresh again. It's almost like going back to college, like going back to what you felt like when making a decision about whether you want to do commerce or engineering. The only problem is, you are doing it at 40 rather than at 17 or 18 and with skills you've worked on for 20 years at the exclusion of other skills. You have to start all over again. That, I think, in a lot of ways can be daunting to people, and it's not easy, especially, if I may say so, because you are used to competing and playing at an extremely high level. You pride yourself on a certain level of competence and a certain level of ability.

Very rarely people can, I think, step out of something they've done for 23 years and attain the same standards in whatever they do. When you are used to playing at that top level, it's hard to accept that sometimes you have to settle for being second-best. I guess that's the way it's going to be. You can't expect a guy at 40-41 to become "world class" at something else.

	"Mentally sometimes you are fresher when you are younger. You've not been worn down so much. So your response to defeat, failure, success, pressure is better. As you get older, the freshness gets lost, the sense of excitement"

What do retired players tell you about coping?
I have spoken to people who retire, and specially coaches. Whether it's been conversations with Kapil Dev or through the years with John [Wright], Greg [Chappell], Gary [Kirsten], and even Duncan [Fletcher] now. All of them have gone through that and they say it takes a bit of time to get used to. You get used to it and then there are new things to challenge you and you must move on. Each one is different, I guess.

Before you actually retired, was there a time in your career that you were so totally fed up that you actually wanted to throw it all away?
Obviously the period just after the World Cup when we lost, in 2007, was difficult. It was the first phase in my career other than the first couple of years when I was establishing myself, that I got dropped from the one-day side. Other than that I had a pretty smooth run for a long time. That was tough in terms of some of my performances, that whole period, 2007-08, getting knocked out of the World Cup and not performing so well after I gave up the captaincy for a while. I think that was a really hard period, when I questioned myself a lot and wondered whether it had all just disappeared and gone away.

I thought I'd really had a good run and I could have walked away in 2008 and felt pretty comfortable with what I had done and achieved, and I wouldn't have regretted it at all. Because I've always tried to do my best - you've always got to try to be the best you can be and hope that the results fall your way. If it hadn't worked out, it hadn't worked out. But I was lucky to get a chance to play a couple of years of cricket.

How much was working on your fitness a part of pushing yourself through the last four or five years from then on?
I spent two-three years working with Paul Chapman, who was the strength and conditioning coach at the NCA and the NCA's physios and trainers, on raising the bar of my fitness. I was lucky that we had all those people there here. I saw in those physios and trainers and in Paul, a resource, really good professional people who could help me. And I sort of decided to utilise that completely. I did make a conscious effort to try and raise the bar of my fitness, because if I wanted to keep playing at this age, I didn't want any of the younger guys or people in the field to feel that I wasn't fit enough to be there.

Sometimes performances you can or can't control, but fitness I think to a large extent you can control. I'm not saying you can control everything in fitness - there are a lot of guys who have injuries, who, whatever they do and whatever they try, sadly they can't do much about. But in most things, fitness and diet and stuff like that, you have responsibility over it.

Performance… sometimes you practise and work hard and still things don't pan out. But fitness is a lot simpler. I said, "Look, I'll make an effort to be as fit as I've been. While I did try, it was hard to say I've been at my fittest. In some areas I was fitter than I was at 24-25 and in some areas I was not. But I'd like to believe that till I finished my career, I set a pretty high standard of fitness for myself and I didn't let anybody down in terms of the effort I put in in terms of my physical fitness.

Did it have a direct impact on your game in the last few years, you think?
It's hard to co-relate the two. You do perform better when you're fit, you do feel better about yourself, but it's hard to say. Even when I was doing badly in 2007-08, I was pretty fit. Was I really fitter in England last year than I was in 2007 when I was doing badly? Really, no. Probably I was fitter back then when I was in England, so no. Sometimes fitness is a good thing to have but you have to recognise that fitness takes you only so far, and skills are the most important thing.

Fitness just helps you execute those cricketing skills for longer and more consistently maybe. If someone thinks, "I'll spend the off season working on my fitness and I'll come back a better cricketer," I don't think that's enough. You need to spend a lot of time working on your skills and honing your skills.

When cricketers go into their late 30s do they sense what the outside world observes as a fading of their skills? Slowing down of reflexes, eyesight etc?
I didn't sense it like that personally… but maybe we are trained not to sense it, who knows? Maybe sometimes these things are better judged from outside. As a player you will never admit to weakness, to a slowing down of skills. You're not trained to admit these things. You have bad patches when you are 24-25, and it's only when you have bad patches after 35-36 that people say your skills are down, the eyesight is gone. Maybe it has not, maybe it has nothing to do with age and you're just going through bad form and you happen to be 35. After 35, I felt as fit in terms of physical fitness - if you judge fitness in terms of sprinting a distance, running a distance, whatever yo-yo tests we have and weights you lift - as I was when I was playing my best cricket, at 28-29. I was probably doing more in terms of some things now than I was when I was young.

How do you judge eyesight? If you go to a doctor and ask him, he will you've still got 20-20 vision. Maybe [time] just wears you down - the travelling, the pressure, the dealing with expectations, those things slowly start chipping away, chipping away. It's hard to put a date to it and say, "Now it's started decreasing and now it has decreased."

	"It's got to move on from being the team that was led by my generation, which is already happening slowly" © Getty Images Enlarge

The best explanation I've heard for this is that mentally sometimes you are fresher when you are younger. You've not been worn down so much. So your response to defeat, failure, success, pressure is better. As you get older, the freshness gets lost, the sense of excitement. Like what you experience the first time you walk into Lord's. After you've been there three or four times, maybe that sense of wonder goes. That's the best explanation of why after a period of dealing with some of the same things, they become more difficult, rather than a fading of skill.

In that way Australia must have been the tour from hell? You went there with the best intentions, the best preparation, and it all went badly. What went wrong?
I think Australia was disappointing. In England I felt we had quite a few injuries and I just felt we weren't necessarily as well prepared as we were in Australia. Australia, I thought we went there with the best of intentions, the guys cared. They played better, they pitched the ball up, we had some opportunities in the first Test, we didn't grab them. We had them at some 210 for 6 and then they got 320 and we were about 220 for 2, and Sachin got out that evening and I got out next morning. Having said that, you have got to give them credit. They bowled well, pitched the ball up, they swung the ball.

From a personal point of view? All the bowleds?
It was disappointing. You set high standards for yourself. I felt that getting out is getting out and obviously constantly getting out…

So it really doesn't matter whether you were out caught, lbw, stumped, bowled, whatever?
I don't like getting out, period. How it happens is almost irrelevant. But yeah, obviously it happened a few times more than I would have liked, no doubt about it. The beauty of it is that now I don't have to worry about it.

But those are challenges you face all your life. I think that is what differentiates people who play for long periods of time from others, because they keep getting asked questions. Top bowlers and top bowling attacks keep asking you different questions. For some, it is getting out in a particular way, for some it is the ability to play spin, for some to play pace. For some it is a different bowler, a unique angle, on a different wicket. These questions keep getting asked and you have to constantly keep coming up with answers. Most of the guys that I know who have played over a period of time have constantly been able to find answers to the questions that keep getting asked. You become a problem solver, a solution finder. I'd like to believe that if I had continued, I would hopefully have worked on this area [getting bowled] and got better at it.

Much is said about body language and neither you or the Indian team was big on body language. In your experience, how much did that count in a competitor?
I feel now that now good body language is sometimes equated to being abusive or aggressive, and I think that that's not true. Each of us is different, and I think there's people who show more of their body language in a particular manner and that's what works for them, and fair enough, I'm not saying that that's wrong.

Body language can mean different things. Just because someone is not over-the-top competitive doesn't mean he's not a good competitor. Or it doesn't mean he's not in for a fight. There are external people and internal people. It doesn't mean that people who are more internal are less aggressive. They can be as aggressive.

Sometimes the toughest bowlers, I found, were always the guys who gave away nothing in terms of the way they thought - what got them angry, what got them frustrated. They were very, very hard guys, because you knew they were just focused on bowling and doing the best they could. Someone like McGrath, someone like Ambrose. When I played Ambrose, it was a great education for me. He never said a thing. I've never heard him speak; I don't know what he sounded like and I was on tour for four months. He gave you nothing. He pitched every ball on the spot, he was proud of his skill and his craft; he wanted to take wickets and he ran in with intensity.

You knew that intensity, you could sense that intensity with them. They did it throughout the day without showing you much. There were a lot of guys who would shout, stare at you, swear. But you knew they did not have the stamina or the fitness to survive till the end of the day. You could tell that they were emotionally violent but that they would fade.

Then there were people like Warne or Murali. Warne was dramatic but he was also incredibly aggressive. You knew that when he got the ball in the hand, he was going to come at you. I judge aggression on the way people perform.

The bowlers I respected or feared or rated were not the ones who gave me lip or stared at me or abused me. More the ones who, at any stage of the game, when had they had the ball in hand, they were going to be at me and they were going to have the skill and the fitness and the ability to be aggressive.

	"There were times then I could have done things differently with the captaincy. Being probably a little less intense. Maybe I was so keen to do a good job that I got too caught up in it"

And that was easily picked up.
You could tell that very quickly. You can see the spell of a guy who's just raved and ranted, and after tea you can see he's just not the same bowler. He's not doing the discipline thing. The team might require him to be bowling one line and blocking up the game because there's a big partnership developing. And they are more interested in trying to be aggressive, to do their thing and trying to be the hero. It becomes about them, not about what the team is trying to do.

Coming from a country like India, with a technique attuned to playing spin, what was it like tackling Murali and Warne. What were the methods you used to face them?
No matter how much practice you have, these guys were great bowlers. They had variation, consistency, control. There were some great spinners during that time - Murali, Warne, and I was lucky to play with Anil and Harbhajan, two guys who bowled well for us. You had Saqlain, who bowled well against us in a couple of series. Daniel Vettori was extremely consistent; bowled good tight lines. So these guys were good. I like to believe we played some of the world's greatest spinners better than some of the other teams did.

One of the things is that because we had so much practice, maybe we read some of these guys better. One of the things we did better was that whenever a bad ball was bowled, we were able to punish it, and we had the guys who had that skill. There was a certain amount of pressure on the spinners bowling at us, that they had to be at their A game all the time. And when they were at their A game, they knocked us over a few times, no doubt about it. But you had to be at your A game to do well against us, and you can't be at your A game all the time.

What do you make of the general notion that struggling against fast bowling is worse than struggling against spin?
I think that sort of thing is a throwback to the days when there was no helmet, so there was a fear of injury when facing fast bowling. People were scared, and everyone would have been scared, but I guess those who showed it were considered weaker and that was not considered good to be. Also, I think subcontinent tours in the old days were not considered the No. 1 tours - people didn't necessarily value their tours to the subcontinent as much as they valued tours to England, Australia or South Africa. That has changed now and it's pretty obvious that, with the kind of audience and support that cricket generates in this part of the world, a tour to this part of the world is extremely important now.

Honestly, if you want to be a good batsman you have to prove yourself in all conditions. To say that it is okay to do badly in the subcontinent, to do badly against spin, is not acceptable anymore. It's slowly changing. When I look at the media in England, Australia, South Africa, in the past sometimes they would almost have a casual attitude to performances on subcontinent tours. They are also putting a lot more focus and emphasis on it now. When some of their players don't do well on the subcontinental tours, they get criticised and it gets pointed out and questioned, which is a good thing.

Your captaincy had some good results and at the same time many dramas. What, firstly, did you like about job?
I enjoyed the decision-making process in the middle. The actual captaincy side of things was good. I enjoyed being part of the process of trying to build a team, trying to be creative, to see how we could get the best out of players, see how we could win and compete with the resources we have. Those are sides of captaincy you enjoy.

There were some good results. In the end you have to accept that you are judged a lot by the World Cup in India, whether you like it not. Obviously that World Cup didn't go well and didn't pan out the way I had hoped it would. So I guess it clouds a lot of what happened. But I think there were some good results and there were some tough times, like with a lot of captains, but the overriding impression that tends to stay is that World Cup. I'm not here to justify anything. I recognise that I always knew that was going to happen. That's the way it is.

Was captaincy something you were actually looking forward to doing?
I was vice-captain for a long time and I was part of the process, so yes, I knew that if there was an injury or something that happened, I would be the next guy in charge. You're part of the management and decision-making process, you're contributing, you're ticking all the time, so you know you have to be ready. I also knew that me and Sourav were also of the same age and it might not happen. When it did happen, I was extremely keen and excited about trying to do a good job of it.

Did the Chappell drama weigh you down as a captain? When you look at it now, should you have done something differently? Maybe behaved out of personality and been confrontational with him? Or did you believe you and Chappell were on the same page but the environment soured very quickly?
I think when you look back at any stage of your career, there are things you could have done differently, and that captaincy period is no different. In terms of intention, of what we were trying to achieve, I have no doubt in my mind that you know it was on the right path. Sure, we made mistakes, sure, there were things that we did right, and maybe some of the results didn't show up right away, they did show up later on, but that's just the way it is.

I'll be the first one to admit - and my whole career is based on looking to improve and try to do better - that there were times then I could have done things differently, in the way that I approached it and handled it. Being probably a little less intense. Maybe it came to me that I was so keen to do a good job that I got too caught up in it. I got too tense, too anxious or too keen about it in some ways.

	"Questions are going to be asked about Kohli, and how he comes up with solutions or answers is going to decide how long or how successful a career he is going to have" © Getty Images Enlarge

Do you think that captains can actually lose teams and that at one point you lost the team?
Maybe it is. I don't know if you lose the team. You can lose players in your team and you have to try and fight and get them back sometimes. Or sometimes it's phases that players are themselves going through in their own careers that pushes them away from the team. In some ways so you can lose players. I don't think you can lose a team. Then there are times when you are making tough decisions about doing certain things that not everybody in the team likes. Then you need results to go your way. At a time like that, if results don't go your way then sometimes it becomes easy for people in and around the system to sometimes, I guess, pull in different directions. Eventually it does become about results. It's not all about results but results are incredibly important. And I think, specially as we've seen in India, results in big tournaments.

Why did you stand down from the captaincy after the England tour in 2007 that had gone well?
Maybe I just lost the enjoyment of the job. I got a certain joy out of captaincy, and maybe there was a period on that Engand trip where I just lost the joy of the job. I'd been playing and captaining non-stop for three years and I also had a young family. I lost a certain enjoyment, and I generally felt that the captain of India should be someone who is extremely eager and excited and wakes up every morning wanting to captain the team. Maybe in that time there were days that I didn't feel like that.

When you retired, you called your team-mates and spoke to them before making the announcement. When you quit the captaincy, you just vanished. What was that about?
When I look at it in hindsight, I could have handled it better. I didn't want to make a fuss about it at that stage, and I think a lot of people got upset with me more about how I handled it rather than the decision in itself. So you learn from that, you learn from the mistakes. Maybe I could have handled it a bit better and done it in a better way than I did.

Now that you're about to go into the IPL as one final hurrah, what is your response to the impact of Twenty20 cricket on Indian cricket?
The reality is that when I grew up, playing Test cricket was the ultimate. It mattered professionally also in terms of making a living from this game, which does become important at some point. You had to play Test cricket consistently for a long time to do that. But now you don't need to play Test cricket. The advent of Twenty 20 and the IPL has meant that it is possible to make an extremely good living from the game without having to play Test cricket. In the past you had only the cream at the top who were making a good living, but now it's spread a lot more and you have a lot more people who make a very good living. It is one of the great positives of the T20 and the IPL.

But there is obviously the danger that players might sell themselves short. If they face early stumbles or hurdles early on in their Test career or in first-class cricket, there might be a few who may choose to stick to T20 because they are better at it and they are making better money from it and they don't want to risk losing that.

India will face this challenge a lot more because a lot more Indian players play in the IPL. So how we address that challenge and go out and make people and players value Test cricket - that will come down to scheduling. We have to schedule more Test matches per year. It will come down to compensation. You've got to compensate Test cricketers adequately now. It'll come down to marketing, how you market Test cricket, glorify its history. It'll come down to coaches at junior levels, how they talk to their wards, how they inspire them about Test cricket. It'll be about stories, it'll be about media. Everyone will have to play their part.

There have been some good examples recently of people who have been good players in Twenty20 and have come out and done well in Test cricket. It's a good thing for kids to see that you can succeed in all three forms of the game. That's important. I have no doubt that a lot of the kids playing today in the one-day and Test side have grown up having Test cricketers to admire. But it's kids who are my children's age or a little older, who are now getting interested in the game for the first time and are seeing the IPL, it's those kind of children that we need to educate and talk to about Test cricket.

The responsibility lies with the ICC and the boards to schedule enough Test matches. They might have to make a few sacrifices in terms of money. I have no doubt that if you play enough Test matches, kids will want to play it. People might not come to the grounds that easily, and that's why it's important to explore other avenues - whether it is day-night cricket, or venues where we play it, and the context of Test matches. We have to accept that people don't have the time, but there is still huge interest for Test cricket. People follow Test cricket, whether it's on television or the internet, in India as much as elsewhere.

In the last few years in as much as there have been fears, the number of the articles that get written about Test cricket, the number of people who follow it passionately, who talk to me about Test cricket - that hasn't changed.

	"It was important for me how the team was projected. We were going through a rough patch, we had come out of this match-fixing thing. We were always known as poor travellers. Each team has its own image; that's what you want to change"

In this Twenty20 age, how must India handle the passing of a great generation of its Test players? After 8-0, how can the transition be made smooth?
At some stage there is going to be a whole new generation of players. I know there are always links between one generation of players and the others; there is always a middle-level of management - players who have been around and are still going to be around for a few years. Two or three guys might retire in the next couple of years, whenever that is, who knows? But after that there are going to be guys who are going to be around, and the responsibility is going to lie on these guys to step it up. Guys like Sehwag, Gambhir, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Dhoni himself. Not only as players but also as spokesmen. As people who decide the culture of the team, the way the team is run, the image they want to project of the team, regarding which form of the game is important to this team. It will be a group of players, who I think are already seniors, who will set the tone for the next generation coming through.

That cycle goes on, that cycle will go on. It's got to move on from being the team that was led by my generation, which is already happening slowly and will continue to do so over the next few years. I'm not saying the seniors need to be replaced, they will be the sounding boards. But the direction and the culture of the team over the next ten years will have to be decided by this capable group of young players.

Virat Kohli is now seen as the leader of a younger generation - do you see him as your successor in the No. 3 slot?
He's got the talent - that was obvious from the time he was an Under-19 kid. He didn't have a really good [first] year at Royal Challengers Bangalore but you could see that there was talent. That's not going to change. He's got the talent to succeed at this level and it's great to see the evolution of this kid, from what we saw at 19 to what he's becoming now. His consistency of performance and his ability to play in different conditions and score runs in different conditions - that's great.

And he's got to keep doing that. As with any career and anything that you play for a long time, questions are going to be asked of him. On the technical front, on the physical front, on the mental front. On how he deals with failure, with success, with all that happens around him in Indian cricket. Questions are going to be asked about him, and how he comes up with solutions or answers is going to decide how long or how successful a career he is going to have.

Indian cricket can hope that someone like Virat, who has seemingly made that transition from a precocious talent to a performer at the international level, is able to have a long and successful career. The strength of your team is finally built around people who can have long and successful careers. You can then build a team around him and some of the other young guys.

Do you worry about where Indian cricket is at the moment - that we are going to be a very good, competitive team in ODI cricket rather than a successful Test team? Or that all of this depends on ensuring that your fast bowlers conveyor belt doesn't go around so quickly?
I wouldn't say I'm worried. I would say there are challenges that Indian cricket faces today. Some of these are challenges that have always been there in the history of our game - whether it is finding good quality fast bowling allrounders or finding opening batsmen, or finding real fast bowlers. These challenges have to be addressed, and it's no point worrying. There are lots of positives about Indian cricket.

It's going to be a whole new level of thinking, a whole new level of leadership, of thought, that is required. Like I said, of how the team is going to project itself. You can't just let things flow. If we just let things happen, they will happen. You might get lucky, you might suddenly find a brilliant player or a brilliant fast-bowling allrounder from somewhere, but there needs to be serious thought put into the way the team is and what is the way forward and how we want to see the Indian team, not today but ten years ahead.

When we got together as a group of guys in 2000, it was important for me how the team was projected. We were going through a rough patch, we had come out of this match-fixing thing. We were always known as poor travellers. It was said we were scared of fast bowling, we were arrogant, rude, or that because of match-fixing you can't trust anyone. These were the things that you wanted to change. Ten years later, now there is another challenge. Each team has its own image; that's what you want to change. Maybe this team now has the image where it's said they are very good one-day players, they are not that good as Test players. You keep hearing talk around the place about what impact the IPL might have, how everyone will only want to play IPL and how it might affect our Test cricket. Hopefully these guys will go on challenge that notion, to show us that it is not the case.

The day before the next Test that India plays, if the team called you into the dressing room to make a speech, what would you say to them?
I wouldn't go in! I don't know what my future might be. Somewhere along the line I'm sure I'll bump into the guys. I'll catch up with them. But I don't know if I'd be really comfortable walking into an Indian dressing room now. In some ways I just think that when you move on from there, you move on.

I don't think I was good at speeches, even as captain. The people who inspired me and mattered most to me and whom I looked up to were people who actually walked the talk. Who didn't necessarily speak a lot but you knew that they put in 100% - what they did was an example more than what they said. I did say a few things but I don't think I was the guy who gave a lot of speeches. So, well, if I did go into the dressing room again, I would just tell them that it's their time now, my time has passed.

Sharda Ugra is senior editor at ESPNcricinfo

Feeds: Sharda Ugra

© ESPN EMEA Ltd.

-----