The possibility of a wall rebuilt

UMPIRE`S POST

Rahul Dravid, once India's most dependable batsman, now seems to be a shadow of his former self.

Between 2002 and 2006, if you were to choose someone to bat for your life, you would have been wise to pick Rahul Dravid. He was a better bet than Brian Lara, who has the highest individual scores in an innings in Tests and first-class cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, who has remained a genius for 19 years, and Ricky Ponting, the most prolific batsman in the all-conquering Australian side of that era, because Dravid at all times looked the most sure at the crease. He was always up for the long haul. Even if Dravid let you down, it would not be because of a lack of trying or lack of interest.

Dravid was never the kind of batsman to keep the scoreboard ticking. He had the shots (even though his brush with IPL is considered an abysmal affair, this columnist saw him play some outstanding strokes in Bangalore’s IPL match against Delhi at the Kotla), but he seemed to love the long innings. Though he has scored over 10,000 runs in ODIs and played a few blinders, it is in the Test arena that he has revelled.

Now that he has stopped making the tall scores — or medium ones, for that matter — his batting, calibrated as ever, has become a painful sight.

Dravid pretty much won the Adelaide Test on the 2003-04 tour on his own, though credit is due to VVS and Ajit Agarkar. At Headingley in England before that, he was the man of the match. Though Sachin and Sourav also scored centuries, they came after Dravid, who, at one-down, had neutralised the early loss of Sehwag on a damp, sticky, swinging pitch. Later in 2004, he won a Test in Pakistan. He was the key to all of India’s critical wins up until Sabina Park, where he batted nearly 10 hours for scores of 81 and 68. After that match, Dravid’s average stood at an imposing 58.75 after 104 Tests.

Since then, every time we thought it was Dravid out there on the wicket, it seems it was not him but an impostor. A good impostor — there was a century in Bangladesh, another in Chennai, and a 93 at Perth — but not Dravid himself, because there has been little else.

In the last two years, he has been dismissed 21 times before getting to 20 — a very un-Dravid thing to do. In the last 24 Tests before the current one at Nagpur, he averaged just 32.04. This series, too, does not herald a revival.

By the time you read this, hopefully Dravid would have scored a brilliant century in the second innings. Those headlines about crumbling walls are sickening.