Wallflower to Wall again

Rahul Dravid has been recalled to ODIs to address Indian batsmen’s traditional failing — the short ball

Many are wondering why Rahul Dravid is back in the Indian team for one-day internationals. Umpire’s Post has yet to figure out why he was dropped in the first place. The year he was dropped, 2007, Dravid averaged 37.4 an innings with the bat in 31 matches, just a shade below his career average of 39.49, though admittedly he had been pathetic in the last six matches.

Yet, with players of undeniable credentials like Dravid, you do not look at numbers to decide selection. You just pencil them in, and it is a principle that should have been applied to Dravid and Ganguly (and Laxman, too) in the same unflinching manner that it has been applied to Sachin all these years.

Hell, all you need to do to select Dravid is to just look at him play. Even if you are watching your first game of cricket, the flow of his bat, the position of his elbows, the stillness of his head, and the lyrical quality of his stroke-making — in defence as much as in attack — will tell you that here is a talent not to be messed with. Unfortunately, many of you will not empathise with this because the television camera, for all the advance of technology, fails to catch what is obvious to the naked eye. It seems the selectors, in dropping Dravid, were taking revenge on him for turning his back on captaincy.

One has to look at the fact that Dravid, 36, did not announce retirement from ODIs despite being dropped. He hung around, evidently determined to make a comeback. It shows grit and self-belief that have yet to touch the younger crop of players, such as Rohit Sharma, 14 years younger to Dravid and one who is understood to have had to make way for Dravid.

The way the younger batsmen were made to hop around by bowlers bowling short and fast as India let go of the tag of the T20 world champion may have something to do with Dravid’s recall, as also the fact that the forthcoming Champions Trophy is being held in South Africa, where pitches are known to support the kind of bowling the younger Indian batsmen do not savour.

So where does that leave Rohit Sharma? Not down in the dumps, certainly. He has had a poor record so far — an average of 24.8 runs in 41 ODIs. But there is a buzz around him, not the least because of some sparkling knocks in IPL.

But it is quite insane if one has to choose between Dravid and Sharma. The former, forever thought of as misfit for his so-called solid style for games in which overs are limited, has accumulated 10,585 runs in 333 ODIs.