No full stops for Dravid’s India

By John Cheeran
We are far from finished,” that’s the message Indian skipper Rahul Dravid has put across after reining in Graeme Smith’s South Africans in Mumbai.
It is an indication that Dravid and Greg Chappell will not waver, and they have no reason to waver, on the new path they have taken Team India to. There will be bouncers on the way, but you need to play your game with the right approach.
India’s five-wicket win has come at a critical juncture. Defeat at Calcutta had given Team India’s critics enough ammunition to fire at coach Greg Chappell and Rahul Dravid. Ganguly Gang’s criticism, though directed at Chappell, was also meant to disrupt the composure of skipper Dravid.
The whisper campaign against Dravid had already begun in Calcutta but those professional hecklers were waiting for another false step from India. To their chagrin, and to Ganguly’s too, that didn’t come.
The way Team India regrouped after that miserable show in Calcutta signals that this side has steel as well as silk. It was an absorbing tussle. A team’s fighting qualities can be gauged from the way they field and at Mumbai Indian fielding has been truly world class. What a contrast from Eden Gardens!
Eventually it turned out to be a close game but only thanks to a dubious lbw decision against Virender Sehwag by who else, but that self-confessed Ganguly fan Daryl Harper. Harper had already compromised his integrity as an international umpire by telling the media when the series was still alive that he wants Ganguly to come back. An umpire should be having no business to air views on participating teams’ selection priorities.
If not for that finger pointing by Harper, vice-captain Sehwag would have finished the game in the first 25 overs. But then stage was set for captain.
Dravid again proved that captaincy has not burdened his batting with a responsible innings that sealed India’s win.
It would come in handy to remember that it took only two defeats for reactionary elements in Indian cricket to find faults with the new found ways of Indian team. Barbs were flying around against the bold moves and the out-of-the box thinking inculcated by the new team management. A few in the MSM surprisingly wanted to highjack the debate on the Team India from basic cricket issues to such trivia as coach’s finger.
There are, of course, fault lines with in the team, which will be there in any professional team. It is the ability of a side to limit the adverse impact of those flaws that often take them to victory.
And India showed they are capable of doing just that in the last 11 one-day internationals played at home. India lost three, but won eight. And mind you, they did not lose both series. Such a consistent performance in the post-Ganguly era augurs well for Team India. Indian batting was tested to the full against South African pace battery. There were disappointments to a few of the top order of batsman but none of them – Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Mohammad Kaif and Gautam Gambhir -- looks woefully out of form.
And biggest gain for skipper Dravid has been Yuvraj Singh’s impressive batting against South Africa in crisis hours. It was only a couple of matches earlier Ganguly Gang was suggesting a swap between Yuvraj and Ganguly.
Whether it is a one-dayer or a Test match, fielding should be an asset for any cricketer. And Yuvraj’s Singh’s fielding in the one-day series has been nothing short of a revelation. Dravid will have no option but to include Yuvraj in the eleven for the first Test against Sri Lanka in Chennai.