I don’t think day-night Tests or a Test championship should be dismissed. In March of last year I played a day-night first-class game in Abu Dhabi for the MCC, and my experience from that was that day-night Test cricket is an idea seriously worth exploring. There may be some challenges in places where there is dew, but the visibility and durability of the pink cricket ball was not an issue.
Similarly a Test championship, with every team and player driving themselves to be winners of a sought-after title, seems like it would have a context to every game.
Keeping Tests alive may mean different innovations in different countries – maybe taking it to smaller cities, playing it in grounds with smaller capacities, like New Zealand has thought of doing, maybe reviving some old venues in the West Indies, like the old Recreation Ground in Antigua.
When I was around seven years old, I remember my father taking a Friday off so that we could watch three days of Test cricket together. On occasions he couldn’t, I would accompany one of his friends, just to soak in a day of Test cricket and watch the drama slowly unfold.
What we have to do is find a way to ensure that Test matches fit into 21st-century life, through timing, environments and the venues they are held in. I am still convinced it can be done, even in our fast-moving world with its short attention spans. We will often get told that Test matches don’t make financial sense, but no one ever fell in love with Test cricket because they wanted to be a businessman. Not everything of value comes at a price.
There is a proposal doing the rounds about scrapping the 50-over game completely. I am not sure I agree with that. I certainly know that the 50-over game helped us innovate strokes in our batting which we were then able to take into Test matches. We all know that the 50-over game has been responsible for improving fielding standards all over the world.
The future may well lie in playing one-day internationals centred around ICC events, like the Champions Trophy and the World Cups. This would ensure that all 50-over matches would build up for those tournaments. That will cut back the number of one-day internationals played every year, but at least those matches will have context. Since, I think, 1995, people have been saying that there is too much meaningless one-day cricket. Maybe it’s finally time to do something about it.
The T20 game, as we know, has as many critics as it has supporters in the public. Given that an acceptable strike rate in T20 these days is about 120, I should probably complain about it the most! The crowd and revenue numbers, though, tell us that if we don’t handle T20 correctly, we may well have more and more private players stepping in to offer not just slices of pie but maybe even bigger pies themselves.
So I’ll reiterate what I’ve just said very quickly because balancing the three formats is important:
We have Test cricket, like we have always had, nation versus nation, but carefully scheduled to attract crowds and planned fairly so that every Test-playing country gets its fair share of Tests. And playing for a championship or a cup, not just a ranking.
The 50-overs format focused around fewer, significant multi-nation ICC events like the Champions Trophy and the World Cup. In the four-year cycle between World Cups, plan the ODI calendar and devise rankings around these few important events. Anything makes more sense than seven-match ODI series.
The best role for T20 is as a domestic competition through official leagues, which will make it financially attractive for cricketers. That could also keep cricket viable in countries where it fights for space and attention.
Because the game is bigger than us all, we must think way ahead of how it stands today. Where do we want it to be in the year 2020? Or, say, in 2027, when it will be 150 years since the first Test match was played? If you think about it, cricket has been with us longer than the modern motor car. It existed before modern air travel took off. As much as cricket’s revenues are important to its growth, its traditions and its vibrancy are a necessary part of its progress in the future. We shouldn’t let either go because we played too much of one format and too little of the other.
Professionalism has given cricketers of my generation privileged lives, and we know it, even though you may often hear us whining about burnout, travel, and the lack of recovery time. Whenever we begin to get into that mindset, it’s good to remember a piece of Sachin’s conversation with Bradman. Sachin told us that he had asked Sir Don how he had mentally prepared for big games, what his routines were. Sir Don said that well before a game he would go to work, and after the game go back to work. Whenever a cricketer feels a whinge coming on, that would be good to remember.
Before I conclude, I also want to talk briefly about an experience I have often had over the course of my career. It is not to do with individuals or incidents but is one I believe is important to share. I have sometimes found myself in the middle of a big game, standing at slip or even at the non-striker’s end, and suddenly realised that everything else has vanished. At that moment, all that exists is the contest and the very real sense of the joy that comes from playing the game.
It is an almost meditative experience, where you reconnect with the game just like you did years ago, when you first began, when you hit your first boundary, took your first catch, scored your first century, or were involved in a big victory. It lasts for a very fleeting passage of time, but it is a very precious instant, and every cricketer should hang on to it.
I know it is utterly fanciful to expect professional cricketers to play the game like amateurs, but the trick, I believe, is taking the spirit of the amateur – of discovery, of learning, of pure joy, of playing by the rules – into our profession. Taking it to practice or play, even when there’s an epidemic of white-line fever breaking out all over the field.
In every cricketer there lies a competitor who hates losing, and yes, winning matters. But it is not the only thing that matters when you play cricket. How it is played is as important for every member of every team, because every game we play leaves a footprint in cricket’s history. We must never forget that.
What we do as professionals is easily carried over into the amateur game, in every way – batting, bowling, fielding, appealing, celebration, dissent, argument. In the players of 2027 we will see a reflection of this time and of ourselves, and it had better not annoy or anguish us 50-year-olds.
As the game’s custodians, it is important we are not tempted by the short-term gains of the backward step. We can be remembered for being the generation that could take the giant stride.
The numbers
When Dravid was at the crease, the team scored 32,039 runs, which amounted to 35.6% of the total runs that India made in the Tests in which Dravid played. Dravid is also the only batsman to be involved in more than 700 partnerships; in fact, no other batsman has touched 650 so far.
[ 29 ]
The man they couldn’t move
S RAJESH
The stat that perhaps best sums up Rahul Dravid is not the number of runs or hundreds he made but the number of balls he consumed – 46,563, over a 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 in that format, it puts into perspective the sheer effort that went into scoring the 13,288 runs he did in Tests. There were other batsmen who had more natural talent, or 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.
And then there was Dravid the one-day player. For someone whose playing style was thought to be suited only to Test cricket, finishing eighth on the list of most ODIs played, and with the seventh-highest run aggregate, is no mean achievement. Dravid never had the attac
king ability of a Tendulkar or a Brian Lara, but it’s a testament to his adaptability that he played 344 ODIs, scored 10, 889 runs, and struck 12 centuries and 83 fifties, including one off 22 balls, which remains the second-fastest by an Indian.
Apart from all that, he kept wicket in 73 ODIs, and yet never allowed that to adversely affect his batting – in fact, his batting stats improved when he kept wicket. He also led India in 79 matches, and achieved the second-best win-loss record among Indians who captained in at least 50 ODIs. For any cricketer this is a staggering resume; for one considered only a Test specialist, it borders on the unbelievable.
Dravid in Tests
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. His maiden Test century, a sparkling 148 against a tough South African attack in Johannesburg, further confirmed his class, and from there it was a journey of several highs, interspersed with its share of lows.
For most of his career, consistency was one of Dravid’s fortes. For instance, in the first ten series that he played (excluding one-off Tests), he averaged more than 40 in seven. His best phase, though, was the four-year period from the middle of 2002 to 2006, when he scored heavily pretty much everywhere he went: in 16 series during this time, he averaged more than 49 in 13, 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 trough 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 home team’s pace attack almost single-handed, scoring 461 runs at 76.83. His last series, in Australia, 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 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 of his 14 Man-of-the-Match awards overseas, and only one in a win (excluding Tests in 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 Dravid’s career, which made his 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.
Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel Page 20
