Happy New Year 2011

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'There are no easy catches in the slips'

"The first man to take 200 catches in Test cricket, Rahul Dravid speaks about what it takes to stand in the cordon"
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Shortly before India left on their tour of South Africa, Rahul Dravid spoke to Nagraj Gollapudi on the art, and heart, of slip catching

How deeply were you interested in slip fielding to begin with?

I have never considered myself a natural slip fielder, but I worked hard on it, I practised it, and I have taken my fair share of them. Growing up, in my Under-15 days I used to be a wicketkeeper and that carried on till I was 17. Then I started focusing on my batting and moved on. I got into the Ranji team quite early, and generally, as a youngster the first place you are put in is at bat-pad and short leg, so you had to work on your close-in fielding straightaway. GR Viswanath was the chairman of selectors in Karnataka back then and we did a lot of slip catching early in the morning.

I started really enjoying slip catching because it was very competitive. We had these competitive games with each other as Vishy sent catches our way. With a lot of younger kids coming into the team, we would try to outdo each other.

Once I was in the Indian team I was at silly point and short leg for about four years in the beginning. I started enjoying it by working on the reflexes and catching. Once I became a bit senior - if I could call it that - I moved to the slips. It was a natural progression.

How did you figure out which was the best spot for you in the slip cordon?

When John Wright came in [as coach] he was very keen that we get specalist fielding positions and stick to one position. I identified first slip as a good one for myself.

Mark Waugh believed that slip catching comes naturally, that you can't be taught by coaches. What do you think are the essentials of a good slip fielder?

Firstly you should enjoy it. You should want it to be there. It is a position where you've got to concentrate the whole day, where you are always in the game.

Then you've got to take a lot of catches. There is no substitute to taking a lot of a catches as a youngster if you want to do slip catching - you've got to catch, catch, catch. And more than doing the normal stuff, you have to vary your catching - you've got to take some catches with the tennis ball, you got to take some closer, some further away.

One of the important things I have found with slip catching is, you need to have relaxed hands. When an edge is coming towards you, the last thing you want to do is tighten up or freeze or snatch at the ball.

What about the position - where and how you stand? Is there an ideal one?

Bobby Simpson spent some time with us [the former Australia captain was Indian team consultant during the 1999 World Cup]. He was coach of a team that had what I consider probably the best slip-fielding cordons ever. Mark Taylor and Mark Waugh were the best slippers I ever saw - they were incredible. He [Simpson] came in and altered the way I stood in the slips in terms of positioning. That made a big difference to me. He got me to take the weight on my instep, rather than standing flat-footed. What it does is, you can transfer weight and quickly move in any direction and make sure that you don't have your weight only on your heels.

Each one of us has a unique body position so you have to work out what is exactly comfortable for you. I know some who spread their feet a little more, some a little less, and they catch as well as anyone that I know. In the end, you've just got to catch.

What about hand position? Is it always better to have your preferred hand taking the ball, with the other one wrapped around as a support?

The fact that I never thought about it means I am not sure if I do all that. I just catch the ball. I do have big hands and that does help in slip catching. I don't think you have time to think which hand should come on top; it just comes naturally.

You mentioned practising in different fashions. Can you tell us a little more about that?

It gives your hand a different feeling, of a different object. Like, catching one day with tennis ball, then another day with a slightly hard plasticene ball, then another day with a softer ball - you can even catch with a golf ball. It just makes it more interesting. If you continue taking catches in the regular fashion, it could get boring and repetitive, but if you can just vary it with different balls, with different angles, it could be more fun. It is all about fun.

When you mentioned angles - is practising against left- and right-hand batsmen part of it?

We do that and try and vary it around. At the moment Gary [Kirsten] is the coach and we get a lot from the left-hander's angle. But we get Eric [Simons] to change the angle.

Do you watch the bat, the batsman or the bowler's hand?

I just focus on the ball. As soon as the bowler runs it and as soon as he hits the delivery stride, I switch on and start focusing on the ball in a relaxed fashion. As for reading the hand, if it is a spinner, like Anil [Kumble] or Harbhajan [Singh], you are reading their hands, you are watching their hands - what they are bowling.

How different a challenge is it, standing to a spinner compared to a fast bowler?

Not a massive difference. With the fast bowlers the ball comes at you a lot quicker, but you are further away. With the spinners you don't have that time to react because of the short distance. Then again, it doesn't come at the same pace.

How do you decide where to stand?

From a spinner's perspective, in India it was never easy for me to judge where to stand: how far forward, how far back. Because on Indian wickets the ball does not carry as much as abroad. That is true of slip fielding in general. I wouldn't say only for spinner even for a fast bowler that holds true. A lot of foreign players have pointed that out to me. In Australia and South Africa the bounce is quite consistent, quite even, and you can stand way back. But in India since there is not much carry, the edges do not travel to you straight, so you get sort of tempted and dragged forward all the time. And it is very difficult to know exactly how far forward you need to go. So it is a just a judgement thing, based on the wicket, the bounce, who is bowling, which spell they are bowling, the condition of the ball... So you've just got to keep varying. There is no perfect place to stand.

What sort of pressure are you under as a slip fielder?

As I said earlier, you must enjoy being a slip fielder. Everyone in the slips drops catches at times. You are putting yourself in a position where you are seen, but you must enjoy the fact that you want to be able to make a play. One of the great joys of being a slip fielder who takes a catch is you are able to contribute to the bowler's success. Yes, you are putting yourself in the firing line if you stuff it up, but you must want to be in that position to make a difference, and recognise sometimes that you might make mistakes. There are no easy catches in the slips. But as long as you have practised well and put in enough time, you are fine.

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"Between balls I talk to my co-slip fielders. Like me and Laxman talk about kids, house construction, plumbers, electricians, running errands. But as soon as the bowler starts running in, you switch back on"

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More than pressure, what is the most challenging thing about standing in the slips in Test cricket?

Concentration. At times you will get nothing the whole day, but suddenly in the 110th or 112th over of the match, a sharp chance comes along. You've got to be ready and alert to be able to react. So it is about the concentration, about doing it, day in, day out, over after over, ball after ball.

One thing that could help is having a set routine, a pattern where you know exactly what you are going to do each ball. That keeps you in that space to do that.

You spoke of switching on. What about switching off between deliveries?

It is very similar to batting. Slip catching does help your batting in terms of your routines. Between balls I talk to my co-slip fielders. You talk sometimes about the game situation, but lots of other times about various other topics, not cricket. That keep you focused, keeps you relaxed. Like me and [VVS] Laxman talk about kids, house construction, plumbers, electricians, running errands. You cannot keep talking cricket the whole day - you have to switch off. But as soon as the bowler starts running in, you switch back on.

Could you talk about your two best catches?

In the 2001 Test series against Australia I caught Mark Waugh down the leg side. It was not a slip catch strictly - it was at backward short leg off Harbhajan in Chennai. It was a critical time in the match, during the third innings. It went down the leg side, flew to my right and I reacted instinctively and grabbed at it. The ball bounced off initially but I was able to hold on to it. It had come very quickly. We had practised for such a catch because we had recognised Mark Waugh was someone who played Harbhajan really well off his legs. And on a wicket that bounced a bit we knew one or two edges might come and we should be in a position to catch them. The fact that it was a tight game, that Waugh was already 50-plus - in that context was a huge catch and one I really cherish. Australia collapsed after that, so it was a good catch.

The second one is once again against Australia, in Adelaide: Damien Martyn against Sachin [Tendulkar] in the 2004 series, again the third innings. Sachin was spinning the ball a long way and Martyn drove at one and I stuck my right hand out and caught it. It was a reflexive catch, more instinctive. With such catches, a lot of the time, if you are able to stick your hand out, you have done well. It happens so quickly - sometimes they stick, sometimes they don't. At times the ball just grazes your hand or pops out but you have to put your hand in a position where you at least try.

Against fast bowlers, the one that is memorable is catching Ricky Ponting off Ishant Sharma, at third slip in Perth. The ball was flying across me. There was a bit of extra bounce in the wicket and Ponting played at it, but I moved quickly to my right and reacted quickly to hold the catch.

That's what I was saying earlier - one of the advantages of standing in grounds like Perth is that you have distance, and because of the bounce you have a lot of time. I have always enjoyed standing in the slips in places like Australia and South Africa because the bounce is true. You know you can stand back. The ball carries. It comes quickly but at a nice height and at a comfortable pace.

Who are the best slip fielders you saw?

[Mohammad] Azharuddin and Laxman from India. Andrew Flintoff was superb for England. As for Australia, Taylor, Mark Waugh, Shane Warne and Ricky Ponting. Mahela Jayawardene has lovely hands and is good from Sri Lanka.

What happens when you drop a catch. Do you let it affect you?

At some level it does affect you. You are disappointed about letting the bowler down because he has been putting so much effort to create an opportunity after a lot of planning and thinking and you have not been able to grab on to the chance. But you've got to quickly move on because the worst thing you want to do is to be lingering on it and not be in the right state of mind to grab another opportunity that comes along. With experience you learn to move on, accept it and try and get the next one.

Do you remember all 200 catches?

I can't remember every one off hand, but if you show me the scorecard I will remember.

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Rahul Dravid registers record 200th Test catch

Durban: Indian middle-order batsman Rahul Dravid achieved a rare milestone in his career when he took his 200th catch in Test matches to stay on top of the list in the five-day format of the game.

An accomplished slip fielder, Dravid achieved the feat when he brilliantly caught Dale Steyn off Harbhajan Singh, diving in a flash to his left, during South Africa`s first innings in the ongoing second Test against India at Sahara Kingsmead Stadium.

Dravid now tops the list of most number of catches in Tests. He registered the feat in his 149th match.

Former Australia opener Mark Waugh is at the second spot with 181 catches from 128 Tests, followed by Australia skipper Ricky Ponting (174), former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming (171) and West Indian batting great Brian Lara (164).

Nicknamed "The Wall" for his stubborn and gritty display with the bat that holds the foundation of his team`s batting line up, Dravid is also considered to possess the safest pair of hands in world cricket.

Apart from his exploits with the bat and in the slip cordon, Dravid is a handy wicket-keeper who has don the hat many a times for the Indian ODI side in times of necessity.

Dravid also ranks third in the list of top run-scorers in Tests with a total of 12,025 runs in 149 matches.

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Dravid The True Gentleman

@bhogleharsha: mi-day reports that long after everyone had left the stadium rahul waited for sachin to finish his commitments and went back with him...

Its no wonder, what else we can expect from Rahul Dravid...

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A very bad news : Rahul Dravid not in probable 30s for WC 2011

All the hopes of seeing Rahul Dravid playing for his team in WC 2011 have been shattered as selectors have excluded him from probable 30 players list.
It does not come as a shocker though.
He was not in the ODI frame for almost 2 years. And given the performance of the youngsters like Raina and Kohli, the selectors never felt the need of bringing The Wall back to the ODI squad. Above all, the fact that the WC will be played in the subcontinent remains the prime reason behind dropping Dravid and handing an opportuinity to the youngsters.
Anyways, let's wish all the very best for Team India and hope that they do not dissapoint the home crowd.

~~~~World Cup preliminary squad for India~~~~

M.S. Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Ishant Sharma, Vinay Kumar, M Vijay, Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane, Saurabh Tiwary, Yusuf Pathan, Parthiv Patel, R Ashwin, Wriddhiman Saha, Dinesh Karthik, Shikhar Dhawan, Amit Mishra, Piyush Chawla, Cheteshwar Pujara, Pragyan Ojha, Praveen Kumar

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Dravid reaches 12,000 test runs

CENTURION, South Africa (Reuters) - India's Rahul Dravid became only the third batsman to score 12,000 test runs.

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Next 14 months - Time to Cash In for Dravid!

Guys, here is Team India's Test Cricket Calendar over the next 14 months...

IND vs NZ - 3 Test Matches in IND (Nov '10)
IND vs SA - 3 Test Matches in SA (Dec '10 - Jan '11)
IND vs WI - 4 Test Matches in WI (Apr-May '11)
IND vs ENG - 4 Test Matches in ENG (Jul-Sep '11)
IND vs WI - 3 Test Matches in IND (Oct-Nov '11)
IND vs AUS - 4 Test Matches in AUS (Nov '11 - Jan '12)

So... 21 Tests (including the ongoing Ahmedabad Test)... 15 outta those games are "Away" games!

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Virender Sehwag defends cautious Rahul Dravid

Virender Sehwag was quick to defend Rahul Dravid's slow approach to his innings yesterday. Dravid went on to register his 30th

Test century, but that was after consuming 100 deliveries for his initial 17 runs.

Dravid and Sehwag added a second-wicket stand of 237 runs as India amassed 329-3 at stumps. "He (Dravid) played his game and I played mine. We complement each other well.

He is such an experienced individual, and knows his own game better than anyone else. When we bat together, we never have to say too many things to each other. There's a great understanding," said Sehwag.

Rahul Dravid on his way to a hundred against NZ at Motera yesterday. PIC/AFP

The duo of Dravid and Sehwag has featured in several match-winning partnerships. In fact, Dravid has proved to be Sehwag's most successful partner -- the duo averages a hundred stand every five innings.

Sehwag in partnerships:

>> With Rahul Dravid: Innings: 50, Runs: 3038, Highest: 410, Average: 63.29, 100 partnerships: 10

>> With Gautam Gambhir Innings: 50, Runs: 2890, Highest: 233, Average: 60.20, 100 partnerships: 7

lWith Sachin Tendulkar
Innings: 19, Runs: 1230, Highest: 336, Average: 64.00, 100 partnerships: 3

>> With VVS Laxman Innings: 16, Runs: 493, Highest: 100, Average: 30, 100 partnerships: 1

Memorable Dravid-Sehwag partnerships:

410-run opening stand against Pakistan, Lahore, January 2006

268-run stand against South Africa, Chennai, March 2008

237-run stand against Sri Lanka, Mumbai, December 2009

http://www.mid-day.com/sports/2010/nov/051110-Virender-Sehwag-Rahul-Dravid-slow-approach.htm

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Dravid and his legacy

To be fair, one has always been a Dravid fan. One has always realised that he was once upon a time the best batter in the country. But one always said that Dravid was getting old. And even before this innings one has had his/her own doubts. Did Rahul Dravid meritte his place in the side but one read this article which was only a few years old and one realised how forgotten a guy can be. In 2007 a guy wrote about him! A guy who a lot of us respected. Whom I respect!

Mukul Kesavan in his book 'Men in White', writes this.

Extravgantly Sound: Rahul Dravid

I look forward to some bilious critic attacking Rahul Dravid. It'll make for a change. The Press he getst so fawningly good; it would embarras a North Korean despot. I set out to write a hard-nosed, unillusioned assesement of an overrated batsman...and look what emerged.'

Rahul Dravid is a Paragon, the arch-gent of modern cricket. He's urbane, modest, resolute, dependable, well spoken and he even has a decnt line in self-deprecation. Asked in an interview, after a day;s playduring which he had completed a solid century, if he planned to go after Lara's new record, he instinctively came up with the graceful answer: 'For me to get 400,; he said, you would have to play a 6 day Test Match.'

But is he a great batsman? That's the big question, and there's a flottila of other, more specific que`stions that follow it in a close formation. Is he the greatest batsman ever to represent India? Does he have a claim to be the greatest batsman in the world today? If Rahul Dravid gets to an average of 60 (at 58.75 per innings, he;s within a double century of it) and retires at the big Six O, will the stattistical weight of this achievement allow him to lay claimn to being the greatest batsman of the last twenty-five years, greater than Tendulkar, Lara, Waugh, Gavaskar, Richards even?

Consistency at a very high level is an important part of being a great batsman; it' s why VVS Laxman will never be one. To play sublime innings every now and then isn't enough. On this score Dravid is the most dependable batsman India has ever produced, stattistically more reliable than Gavaskar, which is a staggering achievement.

I would arguew that Gavaskar faced the greater challenges: he opened the batting against better fast bowlers without a helmet, but a batsman can only play to the guhconditions he's given so that can't be held against Dravid. You could argue that Tendulkar in his pomp avergaed roughly what Dravid does today and he has made those runs at a greater rate. Morever to compare the figures of a completed career against one that's still a work in progress is misleading: averages taper off towards the end of a player's span and it is possible that two or three years from now Dravid's avergae will hover around the mid 50-s as Tendulkar's does, or, if he ekes his career out too long, the early 50's, which is where Gavaskar ended his wonderful career, Still, the fact that a pessmistic career forecast has Dravid declining to Gavaskar's statistical level, says something about the height at which he currently stands.

On nearly every count, Dravid's record is outstanding. He has by far the best record for an Indian batsman away from home, a crucial statistic for a team that's notoriously shaky at dealing with foreign conditions. He has played a string of big decisive innings tin the course of the last five years that have won Test matches for India abroad, most recently the two fifites he made in the summer of 2206 on an eccentric oitch in the West Indies.

But figures' arsn't everything. If they were, we wouldn't be asking the question we started with. Nobody asks it of Lara or Tendulkar anymore; we know they're great batsmen. So why -- despite the massive consistency of his record - do we not take Dravid's greatness for granted?

The simple answer is that Dravid has played all his cricket in the shadow of Tendulkar, regarded by many critics as the greatest batsman in the history of Indian cricket. By the time Dravid began playing Test cricket, Tendulkar was a Test star of seven year's standing. If the early nineties belonged to Lara, the second half of the decade was Tendulkar's. The seal on Tendulkar's pre-eminence was affixed by Bradman himself when he observed that Tendulkar's batsmanship resembled his own.Comig out from under Tendulkar's shadow was made even more dofficult by the fact that this grizzled veteran was younger than Dravid. It is natural for a young batsman to supercede the champion of the previous generation, as Tendulkar replaced Azharuddin. But prodigies like Tendulkar upset this sequence: a year older than the great Mumbaikar, it must have some times seemed to Dravid that he had been sentenced to second fiddle for life.

But through the last five years, Dravid by sheer weight of runs, has been the msot valuable batsman in the Indian side. That his peak has coincided with a relative decline in Tendulkar's performance has underlined his pre-eminence. Journalists and commentators elsewhere have acknolwedged with respect and admiration Dravid's achievement, but there has been no rush to celebrate the arrival of a new 'great'. This is partly because Dravid , having been around for ten years, isn't a new meteor in the night sky. It is the fate of the low-profile performers to be taken for granted.

Dravid is a great defensive batsman and the label 'great' is generally aaplied to batsmen who dominate the bowling, whose prefferd style, as with Lara and Tendulkar, is attack, not attrition. Attacking batsmen are sexier than defensive ones. The absolute truth of this can be demonstrated by a thought experiment. Sehwah opens the innings and falls early. Dravid walks in at his usual position at number three. Then the spectators notice long hair under the helmet and realise that Chappe;; has promoted Dhoni. The crowd erups, the stadium begins to fill, viewers everwhere out their lives on hold in anticipation of mayhem. And this is Dhoni, a cheerful Afridiesque brute, who makes no claim to higher batsmanship. Had Tendulkar in his pomp not walked in at his assignrd position in the batting order, collective disappointment would have rustled through the arena. Not so with Dravid. Dravif will never make your pulse race; acknowledging the greatness of those who do, lke Viv Richards or Tendulkar, come more easily, more naturally.

But this can't be the whole explnation. SMG played most of his innings in defensive mode and the Indian cricketing public wasted no time in hailing him as the greatest ever. This has something to do with his record-breaking series where he scored 776 runs in four Tests with thre centuries and two half centuries. In the greatness stakes, getting off to an early start helps (as with Tendulkar) as does and explosive one (as with Gavaskar). The fact that SMG was an opening batsman facing down fast bowlers which is dramatic and exciting in itslef. Also, Gavsakar generally closed out his centuries, unlike Dravid who through the st half of his career had the frustrating habit of getting himself out in the eighties and nineties. But even allowing for these differences, it's curious that we admire Dravid where once we stood in awe of Gavaskar.

I think the reason for this why Dravid is only just beginning to be given his due as a great batsman , has to do with his style of batsmanship. Spectators and cricket writers reserve their highest praise for batsTmanship that seems effortless. The oohs that follow Tendulkar's accentuated straight drive, the high elbow one, minus follow through, are our tributes to magic. The timing! The genius!

Dravid's batting style is the opposite of effortless. It's elaborate, flourishing and effortful and despite all that the Tendulkar or Sehwag. You seldom applaud a Dravid strokenfor it's power or timing. Energetic hook shotsndribble over the boundary line. Drives are hit hard into the ground and nothing is ever hit on the up. Every shot is preceded by a high flourishing backlift unlike Lara, whose backlift ends in high-risk shot maeratking, Dravid's arabesque, more oftern single. And the man-in-a-bunker- effect is exaggerated by Dravid's stance: low, dogged, sweat running off in rivulets.

Dravid doesn't fit the categories invented by a Coarse Cricket Writing to docket batsmen. Here a sound technique always implies a 'compact defence'. Well Dravid's defence isn't cvompact. It's extravagant. His wrists twirl, his bat loops before the ball is disciplined into the ground. Dravid is a great batsman who can do everything. Well Dravid's defence isn't compact; it's extravagant. His wrists twirl, his bat loops before the ball is disciplined in to the ground. Dravid is a great batter; he hooks he pulls, cuts, sweeps, flicks and drives, but his entirte technique is centred on the need to make sure that the ball hits the ground first.

If orthodoxy is shorthand for the coaching manuall or the prescriptions of the MCC, Dravid is the opposite of orthodox. Orthodox bntsmanship His methods aren't orthodox. It is important to say this if only because both critics and admirers describe him to as an orthodox batsman. For example Sambit Bal, paying tribute after Dravid had scored a series winning270 agst Pak in 2004 rote: Dravid's batsmanship has often been taken for granted because its so firmly rooted in orthodoxy,because it is utterly incomprehensible, and so utterly lacking in mysique'.

Dravid's defensive technique, on the other hand, is extravagant.. The bat describes a little scimitar before straightening. When he derives through extra cover

http://community.dreamcricket.com/community/blogs/not_cricket/archive/2010/11/04/dravid-and-his-legacy.aspx

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The phases of Rahul Dravid

RAHUL DRAVID is a Fighter who doesnt give up!

For a period of about 2 years from December 2006 to November 2008, one of the greatest batsmen of the modern era had statistics that read thus:

Matches - 25, Innings - 47, Runs - 1317, Average - 30.63 with two centuries and seven fifties.

It was not the most pleasant time to be walking in the shoes of Rahul Dravid. A man who - up until mid-December 2006 - had a majestic career average of 58.75, had scored over 9000 runs and crossed 50 every 2.5 visits to the crease. He was suddenly transformed into a scratchy, stumbling has-been, who couldn't seem to middle the ball even if he was handed a gift-wrapped half-volley that was sliding down leg.

He fought back - he had to. Rahul Dravid may not look like the archetypal warrior, but it is inscribed in his genetic code that he will not give up a fight. Weak people give up easily when confronted with steep obstacles, strong people do not give up easily. Rahul Dravid does not give up, period.

When he came in today, he started with a boundary off the second ball he faced. And then the battle started. At one end Virender Sehwag was batting at a run-a-ball, at the other Dravid was struggling to score at a run-an-over. After that second-ball boundary, Dravid scored 13 painstaking runs off the next 102 balls he faced - a rate of 0.76 runs per over. Batting on 17 not out off 104 balls, Dravid had done the initial hard work, and then as has happened in the past, he found his groove. The shots that had gone to fielders found the gaps, the deliveries that had been watched or defended started finding the middle of the bat. He wrested back the control he had given to the New Zealand bowlers in the first half of his innings in style: 87 runs came off the next 123 deliveries he faced.

It captured the greatness of the man. There are not too many people in world cricket who would be prepared to grind out a period when runs are hard to come by with the confidence that when they did come, they would make up for the grinding.

The innings was almost a microcosm of Dravid's career as a whole in the way it was neatly broken into distinct phases. From the time he made his debut in 1996 to his battling century today, Dravid's career can be broken down into phases that reflect the extended highs and occasional lows of a remarkable career.

Before he played this innings, Dravid's career graph read thus:

Time Span	Tests	Innings	Not Outs	Runs	Average	100s	50s
June 1996 Debut to March 1999	29	48	4	2395	54.43	5	16
October 1999 to March 2000	8	16	0	426	26.63	1	0
November 2000 to December 2006	67	112	18	6228	66.26	17	30
December 2006 to November 2008	25	47	4	1317	30.63	2	7
December 2008 to January 2010	10	17	2	1029	68.60	4	5
January 2010 to October 2010	5	9	1	207	25.88	0	1
Overall	144	249	29	11602	52.74	29	59

His entry into Test cricket was marked by his immaculate technique and unflappable concentration that led to a natural accumulation of runs all over the world - in places as diverse as England, South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies, Dravid scored runs by the bucketful. There followed a brief slump, with India's tour to Australia in 2000 being particularly tough for Dravid. Immediately after that South Africa came to India and beat the home side before cricket's first full-blown match-fixing scandal hit the game in the solar plexus.

The long break after that did wonders for Dravid, and when India next played, he was the finished article. There followed 6 years of batting mastery when he assumed the mantle of India's leading batsman while Sachin Tendulkar struggled with his own bout of bad form and injuries. After that came the first major slide. It started with India's tour of South Africa in late 2006 and continued till Australia toured India in late 2008. The series that is best remembered as the last one of Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble saw Dravid sink the lowest he had as a batsman. Not only did he not score runs, he never looked like scoring any runs.

From that low, there were only two options - walk away into the dying sunset like his mates Anil Kumble and Sourav Ganguly had done, or rise from the ashes. In the mind of a fighter though, the first option wouldn't have been a legit one, so rise from the ashes he did. From late 2008 and through 2009, the Dravid of old re-emerged, and it looked like he had put his bad patch behind him. However, he was felled by a Shahadat Hossain bouncer in Bangladesh in January this year, and after that he didn't seem the same batsman. In the series against Sri Lanka and Australia, he struggled. But as has been the pattern after bad series against Australia, Dravid has bounced back yet again.

Going over the break-up of his career stats, it is also apparent that there is a stark difference in the 'centuries' column during his periods of slump and his highs. Whether this innings marks the start of Dravid leaving behind his slump or is merely a blip, remains to be seen. However, if history is a pointer, it is encouraging to note that is has come after a not-so-stellar series against Australia and he has reached three figures.

© Cricbuzz

http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/31828/the-phases-of-rahul-dravid

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I 'Like' whatever has been posted on this Wall

From the days she managed to shower the enigmatic Avatar with 108 distinct names, India has patented an ingenious manner to bestow monikers. Sobriquets and epithets that somehow emerge in public consciousness, grow in popularity and then uniquely identify the more famous children of the nation – specifically that characteristic of the hero that captures the mass. Most often, these nicknames have uncertain origin but overwhelming consensus, to the degree that birth certificates and telephone directories aside, the popular title becomes more definite as identifier than the original christening.

Mahatma and Bapu both evoke images of the father of the nation – irrespective of whether one swears by unbendable Gandhian principles or belongs to the neo-urban generation of Bapu bashers. Universal reverence enabled Bal Gangadhar Tilak to turn into Lokmanya, and leadership qualities at two extreme ends of the nation made two noble names transform into Sardar and Netaji.

The phenomenon is not limited to the field of freedom fighters. In literature, Rabindranath Tagore was presented with the mantle of kabiguru, and in spite of being much younger than the venerable heads of politburo in his state, only one left hander ended up as the true dada.

Among all these saluting sobriquets, one rises up distinctly different from others. 'The Wall' is a name that sits immovable on the best ever one down batsman to have ever played for the country. The word Dravidian has taken on a new meaning in the last decade and a half – moving away from the ancient origins of a civilisation as old as time, across the geographical expanse of the southern parts of India and now denotes the broad blade which has for years thwarted the most diabolic of deliveries. And 'The Wall' has taken flight from the psychedelic cover art of Pink Floyd audio cassettes and CDs to take guard on the cricket field as a safe citadel for the coveted wicket.

In keeping with the tradition of Indian epithets, the nick characterises what the country has come to identify with Rahul Dravid. Immovable, impregnable stolidity … unperturbed shield of courage, defending the nation from every invading foreign force and weaponry year after year after year. It is definitely the popular image of the man who has batted on and on for the last fourteen years.

Yet, I find it distinct from the other nicknames discussed above.
At the risk of shooting myself in the foot by firing off an elitist versus mass argument , I will still argue that the primary reason for the difference is that unlike the rest it is an English moniker.

The argument that this is because cricket is an English pastime, elitist among the Indian playing fields, is dated. Since 1983, it has transformed into an Indian game which by some quirk of fate was accidentally invented by the English. And in spite of globalisation and the internet infestation of the country, the mass appeal for the sport in the remotest corners of the country is unparalleled. The aam admi still has a great voice when it comes to popular icons. Tendulkar, with his universal appeal, is still lovingly called Tendya. Ganguly is not the Big Brother but dada. Sehwag is not a blitzkrieg or a double o seven, but goes by the regal and regional Najafgarh ka Nawab. Compared to these, The Wall is a substantial urban leap. English epithets are not unknown, but in order to capture popular imagination they have for ever been restricted to the striking and limited imageries found in 'Tiger' Pataudi or the Rawalpindi 'Express'. The sophistication and stretch of the nickname Wall has a lot to convey, not only about Rahul Dravid's skills at keeping his wicket intact, but also about the essential attractions of his game and the nature of his followers.

If Tendulkar is endowed with the allure of an epic novel that enthrals, edifies and educates, Laxman a brilliant collection of sonnets that are lyrical and lilting, Sehwag a masterpiece which reads like a fast paced thriller, Ganguly a popular novel filled in equal measures with pieces of beauty and unreadable pulp, Rahul Dravid is akin to an elegant exposition of mathematical arguments or grammatical structures, timeless in significance, enjoyable to few but the absolute connoisseurs of the subject.

His game is too perfect, too correct, too neat to have endless popular appeal. Based too much on technical precision than the heady natural talent that Indians have forever been used to worship. The elegant and academic beauty of a perfect forward defensive push, the logical extension of the same into an impeccable drive through the covers, the scientifically accurate moment of connection to send the ball between mid on and the bowler, the productive yet flash free square cut, even the traditional strokes of adrenaline enhancing adventure – the pull, hook and sweep – played with copybook correctness and minimum of risk … the masses are not swayed by such perfection.

After ten thousand runs in one day internationals, after a stupendous 92 off 63 balls a few weeks earlier, after only a handful of very recent failures, he was dropped from the limited overs side in a curious decision. However, there was no effigy of Dilip Vengsarkar going around in flames. No demonstrations were held across the streets of Bangalore. Petitions floated to re-include him in the team had to make do with a few signatures.

Contrast this with the reaction to the dropping of Sourav Ganguly in 2006, after the southpaw had averaged in the mid thirties for over a period of five years and fifty plus test matches, a comfortable twenty runs per innings behind his celebrated middle order companions. Indian masses love a flawed talent – whose vulnerability and emotions are almost palpable enough to touch. Resolute perfection, with a face as readable as the most seasoned poker player, is not something that equates with the popular image of a hero. The very same reason why subtlety in Bollywood movies is circumspect by its absence but for rare ventures of brilliance, mostly made for the intellectual elites and later a section of the multiplex crowd.

However, that is not to imply that Rahul Dravid's phenomenal achievements with the bat have not won him a fan following.

After he was dropped and was busy ignoring journalists to make a double hundred for Karnataka, Cricinfo was loaded with visitors numerous enough to become inaccessible to slower browsers – a rarity for domestic cricket. Well articulated and concisely argued articles in newspapers, magazines, web site and blogs spoke eloquently against what seemed to most to be the gravest of injustice. The responses were sophisticated, rational and – to use a dubious term for the country - parliamentary. Every time his name comes up in discussions, there are advocates of his greatness who voice their opinions with reason, but generally stay clear of foul mouthed abuse exchange so frequent in the internet message boards of our passionate country. Even in this series of blog posts, there have been numerous requests made to me to write about the Wall – and all of these requests are polite and measured … not really characteristics we identify with the common Indian fan who runs around wrapped in the tricolour, burns effigies and sits in busy traffic intersections to protest against some slight to his hero.

Dravid is appreciated by a distinct category of fans, that group of devotees who marvel at technical perfection, to whom concentration and application that goes behind a superbly negotiated late in-swinging delivery with the score reading 4 for one hold more value and merit than a hastily slogged six. There tends to be a marked social correlation between the admirers of the straight batted defensive stroke and the ones who would be rather seen dead than in the streets burning effigies. This is the same group who would actually appreciates the now famed urban sobriquet – The Wall.

But, even though The Wall is how the populace thinks of him, is it enough to characterise all the facets of the maestro's batting?

I beg to differ. Even to the most clamouring and irrational modern cricket 'fan', it is clear that Dravid has been the greatest match winning batsman in the recent times – till the advent of the rejuvenated Sachin Tendulkar. He averaged 102.84 while scoring over 2500 runs in the 21 matches won during the Sourav era. This is simply not possible with purely defensive technique. What we casually overlook while focusing on his impregnable defence is that he is perhaps the first Indian batsman to possess every stroke around the wicket with equal amount of risk eliminated perfection. The revenue more than speaks for his versatility in scoring all over the oval. At the same time, he has also scored some of the faster fifties in One Day Internationals. So, what gives the impression of one dimensional defensive technique?

The explanation is that while batting for the country the excessive element of determination and focus to hold on to his precious wicket makes him avoid the slightest of risk in his strokes, making him eschew adventurous endeavours that he is more than capable of undertaking. Except for the occasional square cut off the front foot, he does not show the slightest inclination towards unorthodoxy in test cricket.

In matches of lesser importance – first class games for his state, domestic limited over showdowns – I have seen him clout the ball over the ropes with élan, giving a freeflowing expression to his batsmanship that he seldom indulges in at the highest level. I remember his four sixes in a fourth innings Irani Trophy hundred when he and Laxman sealed a win against a fighting Mumbai. I remember him stepping out and clouting Sourasish Lahiri onto the remote tiers of the stands in a Challenger Trophy encounter. He is more than capable of attractive hitting and once in a while comes out with the full array of his strokeplay. He did once straight drive Alan Donald for six in a one day international in Durban, a most extraordinary and surprisingly unanalysed stroke. A straight batted pull in his third test match during an explosive forty against Australia still remain fondly remembered. But, ever since he was given the role of the number 3 in test matches, he put a severe price on his wicket, allowing the beauty of his batsmanship to shine through technical perfection and results.

That is not to say that he is selfish in his approach. One can find few examples of a batsman losing his wicket trying a reverse sweep when on 270. Few middle order maestros have taken up the challenge and opened the innings while captaining the side. But, with there seldom being an opening combination that got going on a regular basis before the Delhi duo of Sehwag and Gambhir, he gave the impression of being that Rock of Gibraltar at the top of the middle order that people will remember him as. That Great Wall of India.

People increasingly tend to notice chinks and crevices in the brickwork that presage winds of change blowing into the dressing room. However, something formed over years, brick by brick, takes a long while to be dismantled … and I believe when it is time, he will know it before anyone else and The Wall will depart without crumbling, with the same amount of dignity with which he has played the game and conducted himself in public eye.

Till then I can say with conviction that I 'like' everything that has been posted on this Wall for the last one and a half decades.




http://senantixtwentytwoyards.blogspot.com/2010/10/i-like-whatever-has-been-posted-on-this.html

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Determined Dravid overcomes the pressure

	Rahul Dravid's 104 may not have been his most attractive, but was very significant © Associated Press
Teams: India

These are not easy times to be Rahul Dravid. In his previous innings, on home soil in Bangalore, he walked out to replace the man who many see as his eventual successor. Cheteshwar Pujara had batted with tremendous poise and fluency for 72 and the cheers for Dravid mingled with the applause for a future star. Murali Vijay, who made a hundred in the first innings of that game, had also shown himself to be someone capable of filling any breach in the top three.

Every time Dravid fails from here on, there will be clarion calls for youth. Even when he succeeds, there will be those who say that his presence at No.3 isn't beneficial for the long-term health of Indian cricket. In a country where those in their late 20s like Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif are considered past it, what chance does a soon-to-be-38-year-old have?

This century, his 30th, won't feature in the highlights reels of his career. The opposition wasn't the most taxing and the pitch, though two-paced, was little more than benign. But for a man who has struggled since two wonderful stroke-filled hundreds against Sri Lanka at the end of last year, this was a defining innings in more ways than one.

In his previous Ahmedabad appearance, he had taken India from 32 for 4 to over 400 with a 177 that was as full of intent as any innings he had ever played. This was a very different knock. With Sehwag playing as is his wont, even on a pitch where the ball didn't come on as you'd expect on the opening day of a game, he was becalmed for long periods early on. He faced 105 balls for his first 17 runs, and was fortunate when Gareth Hopkins failed to hold on to a bottom edge off Jesse Ryder when he had just 28.

But in the hour before tea, something changed. The feet started to move more decisively, and the strokes that had previously found the inner ring started to streak away through the gaps. In a passage of play where India scored 69 runs, Dravid made 44 of them. By the time the bat was raised for the hundred that took him past the greatest No.3 of them all, Sir Donald Bradman, he had made 83 from just 111 deliveries. With Sehwag slowing down as a result of a slight jarring of the knee, it was just what India needed to keep the pressure on.

Dravid would be the first to admit that he isn't as prolific as he once was. But leaving aside the statistical anomaly that was Bradman, the law of diminishing returns has affected the greatest of No.3s. Being the pivot of the batting order comes with its own pressures, and unlike those who bat lower down the order, there's no hiding from the dangers of the new ball.

Viv Richards averaged 55.18 with 15 centuries after his first 60 Tests. In his next 61, he made nine more hundreds, but the average dipped to 50.23. Ricky Ponting has suffered similarly. When Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath brought the curtain down on a golden generation with a 5-0 Ashes whitewash in Sydney, Ponting was averaging 59.29 with 33 hundreds. In 38 games since, he has made six centuries, but the mean has dipped to 54.68.

In Dravid's case, he ended the tour of the Caribbean in 2006 with two masterful half-centuries at Sabina Park, on a spiteful pitch where even Brian Lara was made to look ordinary. At that stage, 104 Tests into his career, he averaged 58.75 with 23 hundreds. In 41 matches since then, he has made seven centuries and 13 other scores in excess of 50. But the average is 39.65, largely a result of the failure to play the monumental innings that were once his forte. Only once, at Motera last year, has he gone past 150.

Something about batting with Sehwag brings out the best in him though. In some ways, as bizarre as it may sound, they are birds of a feather. The tempos may be very different but both trust in the method that has brought them so many runs. Sehwag, who has now added 3038 runs with Dravid (average of 63.29) from 50 innings, said as much after the day's play. "Rahul takes his time when he is batting," he said. "He is batting in his own style and I bat the way I want to. It's easier. We never discuss stuff like you should score fast or slow. He bats the way he knows and I bat the way I know."

Even when batting as fluently as he did in Ahmedabad last year, Dravid has never forced the issue with unnecessary innovations or improvisation. In that sense, he and Jacques Kallis remain a last tenuous link to the old ways of Test-match batsmanship.

Another missed catch - again Hopkins, but this time off Jeetan Patel - gave him a reprieve on 92, and there was more than a hint of fatigue about the shot that cost him his wicket with the close of play in sight. The snipers may have been temporarily deprived of ammunition, but yet again the big innings had eluded him.

How much longer can he go on? South Africa lie in wait at the end of the year, the pace and swing of Dale Steyn and the height and hustle of Morne Morkel. More importantly, how do the selectors view Indian cricket's future? If Pujara and Vijay are considered ready, would a tour of the Caribbean, against a team that's been in disarray for years, be a good place to blood them? Will Dravid walk of his own volition?

In some cases, form hasn't always been the prime consideration for moving a player on. Steve Waugh, another with resolve hewn from granite, averaged 76.61 in a final year bookended by Sydney Tests. Yet, with Michael Clarke waiting in the wings, it was decided that he needed to move on. Waugh would have loved another crack at India in India, but it was Adam Gilchrist and Ponting that led Australia as the final frontier was finally surpassed less than a year later.

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A second wind for Dravid?

	Has Dravid been too caught up in the mechanics of survival to flourish? © Associated Press

Watching his innings of two halves in Ahmedabad prompted the question: is Dravid too aware of his own mortality?

Harsha Bhogle

By playing with a bat Michael Hussey called "three metres wide", and doing so in his 38th year, Sachin Tendulkar doesn't only continue to give people a hard time, he gives hope to many others that if you stay around long enough, a second wind is possible. Of course it assumes that you will be picked in that period - some teams cull ruthlessly while others enforce temporary bans - and be fit enough to scour the horizon for that second coming.

I thought of that as I watched Rahul Dravid struggle his way through his first hundred balls in Ahmedabad. My mind, so full of admiration for a great cricketer, was willing him on, but younger, more irreverent, observers on my Twitter feed were calling for his head. Apart from a little purple patch in 2009, Dravid has been averaging in the thirties over three years (interestingly these numbers are very similar to those Tendulkar generated during his lean phase in the middle of this decade) and didn't always look like the great player he is.

Surely on a cruelly flat deck and against an attack that wasn't likely to scare a top team, he could have batted like the player we knew, or indeed like the player we saw after the shackles he had imposed on himself were broken and a century appeared. Or was it that Dravid was building bunkers around him, creating defences against every possible dismissal? Was he getting so caught up with survival that not getting out would seem a success?

A couple of days earlier I heard Sourav Ganguly say, on a news channel, that as a player moves past the mid-thirties he loses his confidence far more than he does his ability. And I wondered if that was the case with Dravid, surrounded as he is by young batsmen, who admire him but challenge him nonetheless. Was he so increasingly aware of his mortality, I wondered, that he was guarding himself against every possibility?

Sometimes players, like managers, can analyse in such detail that they end up thinking of weaknesses that may or may not exist. Batsmen can start preparing for every possible way in which they can get out. As patients get older, they worry about infections cropping up from just about anywhere, where in younger days they might have drunk water out of a tap at a railway station, or jumped out of a tree oblivious to injury. Batsmen can therefore start focusing too much on not getting out rather than on scoring runs.

Indeed, watching cricket in that phase you couldn't help thinking that one player, Virender Sehwag, was looking for an opportunity to score, while another, Dravid, was searching for safety. One seemed to enjoy being out in the middle, like a kid might on a rollercoaster, while the other was gritting his teeth like he was preparing for an assignment on the implications of Bernoulli's Principle. (And given that the passage of a ball through air tends to be governed by the work of the aforementioned gentleman, he probably wasn't too far away anyway!)

Having said that, Dravid could well counter the point saying that he has addressed every match the same way in the last 14 years, and has an extraordinary body of work to support his thesis; that on another day Sehwag might look flippant and the gravitas that Dravid exudes might be more reassuring; that being a man of erudition, a deep thinker and an analyst, has always worked for him.

As it turned out, a century duly arrived, one that took him past Bradman's 29 - once considered as unattainable as a four-minute mile was - at a strike rate better than that achieved over his career. The second half of his innings, in terms of balls faced, produced 80% of his runs. The certainty that Dravid exuded through a glittering career was back, the feet had started to glide, and the bat was searching for runs where it had been intent on guarding the wicket.

Did the confidence that Ganguly was talking about return? Did a voice tell him that putting money in a locker was not much good in a bull market? And will this century, and the accompanying confidence, lead to the second wind, the kind Tendulkar has shown?

I do not know. But what I do know is that beyond a point, the more you analyse, the more you budget for failure. Now that may be good for Obama's security entourage but not necessarily so for quality cricketers.

http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/485466.html

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Me and Dravid did not discuss batting styles: Sehwag

Ahmedabad: Flamboyant opener Virender Sehwag on Thursday said he and Rahul Dravid did not discuss even once their different batting styles even as they struck contrasting centuries on the opening day of the first cricket Test against New Zealand here.

While Sehwag was his usual aggressive self, scoring a quick hundred, Dravid took time to get into groove and gradually improved his strike rate.

Sehwag’s 173 came off 199 balls while Dravid took 227 balls for his 104-run knock.

In the process, they shared a splendid 237-run stand for the second wicket, their 10th century-stand, and helped India reach a solid 329 for three at close.

Sehwag said they were talking to each other regularly but ‘how to get runs’ never became a topic.

“I play my way and he plays his way. He has his own style and I bat in my style. We were chatting a lot but not on how quickly he should score or I should. He knows how to get runs and he got them,” said Sehwag, who had put on a mammoth 410-run stand with Dravid at Lahore in Pakistan in 2006.

Sehwag said the hosts are looking to pile up a total in excess of 500 tomorrow to put New Zealand under pressure.

“We are looking at 500 or 550. If we can reach there we can put pressure on the New Zealand batsmen as the wicket is a slow and I think it will start to turn on the third or fourth day,” said Sehwag who slammed his 22nd Test ton, said.

Sehwag said he hurt his right knee when he fell down while running between the wickets in the morning and the pain became intense after tea.

“Till tea I was batting well but after tea there was pain in the knee and I could not concentrate,” said the Delhi dasher, who struck 24 fours and a six in his 199-ball essay.

Sehwag’s hundred was his sixth in just the last 13 Tests in just over a period of 12 months, during which he and Sachin Tendulkar have been the bulwarks of the Indian batting.

The Delhi dasher had come into the match with five 100-plus and one 200-plus scores.

Asked about the wicket, Sehwag said it was good to bat on in the morning before it got slower.

“The wicket is okay. It depends on the bowlers, how to use it. In the morning the ball came on to the bat and we scored over 120 runs. It’s becoming slow,” he said.

Sehwag said the Kiwis new-ball attack was a bit handicapped by the fact that Chris Martin, though experienced with over 50 Tests under his belt, was bowling for the first time in India while Hamish Bennett was making his debut.

“One bowler is not experienced in bowling on Indian wickets while the other is a debutant. Bennett is a good bowler and would learn from this experience. He has an awkward action which is a bit difficult to pick,” he said.

Asked about Tendulkar approaching a new landmark, his 50th Test ton, Sehwag said the champion batsman approaches every match as if it was his first.

“It’s important to treat every match the same way and that’s what he does. He always plays like it is his first Test, in a similar way,” he said.

PTI

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Dravid surpassed Sir Don Bradman For Centuries

Dravid just surpassed the greatest cricketer's tally of 29 100s.

Congrats for well built innings..!

Well played Viru, as well..!


COMMENTARY ON THAT BALL :

Patel to Dravid, 2 runs, and he gets to the hundred with the cut! Nicely helped away past cover, and limps back for two. Looks up to the heavens, then acknowledges the reception from the dressing room. Second hundred since Ahmedabad last year, and his 30th overall. Goes past Bradman, and is level sixth with hayden now on that list.

Most centuries in tests

http://tinyurl.com/Test-centuries

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Sehwag and Dravid torment New Zealand

India 329 for 3 (Sehwag 173, Dravid 104) v New Zealand
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

	It was business as usual for Virender Sehwag © AFP

New Zealand were given an early glimpse of the difficult task ahead of them in India as the home team moved into a commanding position on the first day in Ahmedabad. Virender Sehwag sprinted to a century in just over a session while Rahul Dravid compiled an old-school Test hundred, starting off cautiously and opening up once set. Their contrasting efforts put India on course for a mammoth first-innings total, and left New Zealand demoralised.

India were thrilled at winning the toss on a track with little in it for either spinners or the quicks: MS Dhoni had a huge grin when he said, "Well, of course we want to bat," while Harbhajan Singh, watching from the boundary, threw his hands up in jubilation on hearing the news.

After that, it was a Sehwag treat for the sprinkling of fans who had turned up at Motera. In the third over, he jokingly signaled for a free-hit after Chris Martin overstepped. There aren't any in Tests, but that didn't stop Sehwag from carving the next delivery through covers for four to get his first runs. Two more off-side boundaries rounded off the over, and there was no slowing him down after that, despite several short deliveries to stop the drives.

Sehwag predominantly scored through the off side, cutting deliveries that were even fractionally wide, and skipping away from the stumps to play inside-out shots off the spinners. Despite going at a run-a-ball, there was none of the violence usually associated with that rate of scoring; he relied mostly on timing and placement as he peppered the off side for 18 boundaries.

India were 60 for 0 in the 12th over, the New Zealand attack was looking blunt, and Sehwag was enjoying himself, laughing after slipping while taking a single. Part-timer Jesse Ryder, though, got the final delivery of that over to move in a touch and had Gautam Gambhir inside-edging onto the stumps. It ended an innings where Gambhir had struggled for fluency as he searched for his form of 2009. He fed on leg-side offerings from debutant Hamish Bennett, who bowled with plenty of pace but didn't trouble the batsmen too much.

Smart Stats During their 60-run stand for the opening wicket, Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag became India's most prolific opening pair, going past the aggregate of Sunil Gavaskar and Chetan Chauhan. Their batting average is third in the list of most successful opening pairs (minimum 3000 runs). Sehwag made his 14th score of over 150 in Tests, bringing him level fourth with Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh. Only Sachin Tendulkar (20), Brian Lara (19) and Don Bradman (18) are above him. The double-century partnership between Dravid and Sehwag was the 15th time that Dravid was involved in a 200-plus stand and the 12th such occasion for Sehwag. Sachin Tendulkar holds the record among Indian batsmen having been involved in 18 such stands. Dravid's century was his 30th in Tests, taking him past Don Bradman and level sixth with Matthew Hayden on the list of batsmen with most Test centuries. Dravid's century was India's 400th in Tests and their 132nd century since Jan 1 2000.

Sehwag was unfazed by the loss of Gambhir, taking two fours an over off offspinner Jeetan Patel three times, and galloped to 82 with 15 minutes to go for lunch but couldn't become only the fifth batsman to make a century in the first session of a match.

Dravid, though, was struggling for runs: he was middling many deliveries but stroking them straight to the fielders. His recent form has been a bit of concern - just one half-century in his previous nine innings - and those worries remained as he scratched his way to 20 off 106 deliveries against a weak attack on a flat track. A couple of boundaries off Ryder midway through the session finally gave him some momentum after which he was more aggressive.

Sehwag had also toned down his aggression after lunch, and seemed to be struggling with his fitness; he rarely zipped through between the wickets, preferring to jog whenever possible and asked for a runner after tea. He was hardly bothered by the bowling till he was well past his fifth Test hundred of the year - a near run-out in the sixth over being the only major moment of concern.

Towards tea, though, he was tiring and offered a slew of opportunities to New Zealand: when on 144 he survived a close lbw call against Daniel Vettori after missing a reverse-sweep, a sharp caught-and-bowled chance in the next over and Bennett misjudged a catch at long-on in the final over before tea. The simplest opportunity came soon after the break when substitute Martin Guptill dropped a skier at midwicket.

As Sehwag slacked, Dravid took charge. The sumptuous cuts of old were back, especially against the spinners, and there were several types of on-drives for four as well. He was hit on the head by a Bennett bouncer, but two deliveries later he contemptuously pulled a short ball for four.

Sehwag was bowled by Vettori while lazily attempting an inside-out drive, but Dravid reached his 30th Test hundred soon after, moving past Don Bradman in the list of highest century-makers. He had taken only 64 deliveries for his second fifty; his first had come off 151. Though he was dismissed for 104 in familiar fashion - bottom-edging a cut - the 237-run stand with Sehwag had already put India in charge.

New Zealand's bowling was average, with the spinners not extracting much turn and the quick bowlers, Chris Martin and Bennett, rarely beating the bat on the slow track. The talk in the lead-up to the series had been about how New Zealand will be able to take 20 wickets in a Test against the Indian batting juggernaut, and that is a question their think-tank will be pondering over after the first day.

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Dravid walks the extra mile

He stopped his cover drive with a frown, as two saree clad groundswomen approached the stroke's vicinity, dragging along with them a squeaky roller. The women stopped just short of him, pulling the burden back from where it came. Watching them recede, he moved back and across, and with eyes focused over his clasped wrists, he executed the text book defence. As he held the pose with grace, the electronic lawnmower swallowed stubborn tufts of grass with a chugging din inside the square, while loud painters splashed their drenched brushes on the smoothened side of the carpet-like lawn.

As the sun sunk below the smoggy Ahmedabad horizon, Rahul Dravid found serenity amidst the surrounding chaos, shadow practicing on the pitch with incredible poise and zeal.

There was no willow in grasp, but his full repertoire of strokes was on display. From the supple drop of his wrists to the crunching hoick over mid-wicket, Dravid toiled for the second time on Tuesday, long after the official net session was over. He was leaving no stone unturned to get it right at Motera: a venue where he has demolished several tangible oppositions before; including his next, New Zealand.

As he crept out of the restricted area to join his waiting team-mates in the parking lot, the frown had turned into a pursed lip smile. In Dravid's world of insulated emotions, it was the equivalent of hip roaring laughter. Despite the odds stacked against him, the reasons to celebrate were plenty. Both his forthcoming opponents and the Sardar Patel Stadium have been more than kind to Dravid in the past.

Even though the batsman is struggling with a lean patch (346 runs in this calendar year at 34.60) leading upto the first Test against New Zealand, one look at his numbers in this city will give even his sternest critics hope aplenty.

His career Test average of 52.73 gets amplified to 60.54 in six matches at the Motera, helped of course with a fifty, a century and a double ton against the Kiwis in 2003. His numbers against New Zealand both home and away are impeccable too, averaging 59.90, with four out of his 29 tons coming against the Black Caps. The combination of the two - against the Kiwis at the Motera - churns out a stunning 85 runs per innings from Dravid's blade.

Turning the tide?

As the cricketing cliché goes, all it takes is one innings to turn the tide, and nobody knows that better than the 37-year-old. It was on this very ground that Dravid embarrassed both his critics and the visiting Sri Lankan bowlers last year, when he scored 177 runs in a day to complete the rescue act, after India were 32/4. That innings had ensured that both his dry spell with the bat and hushed calls for him to be dropped had come to a rude end.

Come Thursday, Dravid will have to do it all over again. For India may have beaten the Aussies without any meaningful contributions from him last month and will probably do it again against the Kiwis, but if they are to stand a chance in South Africa over three Tests starting December, the team will require Dravid's expertise more than ever.

With the bigger picture in mind, Dravid will need Ahmedabad more than ever to turn the tide. And if the knock is anything like what he managed last year against the Lankans, it won't be long before he swaggers right back into national consciousness. The obstacles and distractions are plenty, but if Tuesday evening is anything to go by, Dravid is already ready for action, before even a single ball is bowled.

http://cricket.yahoo.com/cricket/news/article?id=item/2.0/-/story/cricket.indianexpress.com/dravid-walks-extra-mile-20101103/

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Dravid's Form Check

RD's average has gone down by 5 since 2007..!!

Not only have Dravid and Ponting struggled when compared to the best in the world, they've also failed to keep pace with the best in their own teams. There used to be a time when Ponting was unquestionably the best batsman in Australia, but now that mantle has been taken over by Michael Clarke, while Simon Katich too has scored far more consistently than Ponting. It's not as if runs have completely eluded Ponting - among his six hundreds was a memorable 123 against India in Bangalore, his first century in the country, 101 and 99 in the Boxing Day Test against South Africa in 2008, and 150 in the first Ashes Test in Cardiff - but those high scores have been offset by too many low ones.

For Dravid, the situation is worse.

In a line-up of heavyweight batsmen, his average is the poorest among the regular players; while three batsmen have averages of more than 60, Dravid's barely touches 40.

What's also been worrying is the spread of those runs: Dravid used to be India's best bet overseas, but four of his six hundreds during this period have come in India, and the other two were scored in Bangladesh. His one good series abroad was in New Zealand, but he failed to convert his half-centuries into something more substantial: he made four fifties in six innings, but none exceeded 83. Excluding his innings in Bangladesh, his overseas average during this period drops to 33.20, with no centuries in 33 innings. That doesn't augur well for a team who have a tour to South Africa coming up.

he drop in form over the last four years has meant that almost five runs have been lopped off the career averages of both players - Ponting's has dropped from nearly 60 to less than 55, while Dravid's has come down to less than 53 from a high of 57.58. For Ponting, what's noticeable is his poor conversion rate: during his prime he used to convert one out of two 50-plus scores into a hundred, but since 2007 that rate has fallen to one in nearly four (six out of 22). For Dravid, surprisingly, the ratio remains exactly the same before and during these four years.

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For both batsmen, the tendency to get out early in the innings is more marked: Ponting and Dravid used to get out for less than 20 once every three innings, roughly, when they were in form; now that percentage has increased considerably. Of the 60 innings Dravid has played since 2007 (excluding unbeaten sub-20 innings), he has been dismissed for less than 20 on 27 occasions, which is a whopping 45%. Five of those 27 dismissals were in the four Tests when Australia toured India in 2008: of the seven times he batted in that series, only twice did he top 15.

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And finally, here's a comparison of the performances of the two at No. 3, sorted by the score at which they've come in to bat. Again, the numbers don't flatter Dravid. Ponting has averaged more or less the same regardless of the score at which he has come in, but Dravid has clearly preferred situations when the openers have put together a substantial first-wicket partnership, which is another indication that his level has dropped - when he was at his peak, he relished situations that required him to repair the damage of an early setback.

Since 2007, Dravid has come in to bat 22 times when the openers have been separated with less than 20 on the board, and he has only scored two centuries - 136 against England in Mohali when the first wicket fell at 6, and 177 against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad, when the opening pair was separated at 14. On the other hand, he has failed to touch 20 on 10 of those 22 innings.

When the openers have added between 20 and 75, Dravid's average has increased to almost 41, but his conversion rate has been abysmal in these instances, with seven fifties and no hundred. And when the openers have laid a good platform, Dravid has helped himself to an average score of more than 52. In fact, all four of his hundreds have come when the openers have added more than 100 - two of those were against Bangladesh, while the other two followed double-century opening stands, in Kanpur and Ahmedabad.

For Ponting, the numbers are far more consistent, but then he has failed to take advantage of good starts. Clearly, over the next few months both batsmen need to raise their game. Given their past record, there's no reason to suggest they can't.

Stats :

Current Indian batsmen in Tests since Jan 2007

1) Gambhir 2116 @ 62.23 in 19 tests
2) Sehwag 2928 @ 61 in 28 tests
3) Tendulkar 3247 @ 60.12 in 35 tests
4) Laxman 2521 @ 57.97 in 34 tests
5) Dhoni 1850 @ 48.68 in 31 tests
6) Dravid 2392 @ 40.54 in 36 tests

Dravid, before and since Jan 2007

Till Dec 2006 : 9098 runs at 57.58
After Jan 07 : 2392 runs at 40.54

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