I was watching Rahul Dravid bat today towards the end of the second day of third test match between India and NZ when a thought struck me that this could well be the last test innings for him as India will next play a test match after six months and a lot can change within this period. This thought led me to revisit the whole of Dravid’s career in my mind – a career spanning 13 years with a dream phase of almost six years followed by an unbearable slump of about 2 years. With a little research on Cricinfo Statsguru, I stumbled upon an interesting statistics. Again, it is just an analysis based on some numbers and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it should make sense to everybody. So, here we go!!
Let us divide Dravid’s career in three phases:
Phase 1 (England tour, June 1996 to WI tour, July 2006): Dravid played 104 test matches during this period and scored 9,049 runs at a mind-blowing average of 58.75. He scored 23 centuries and helped India win or save test matches more than anybody else in the entire history of Indian Cricket. He was in a dream form for last six years and in the last test series in this period against WI, he was named the Man of the Series. Towards the end of this phase, he was leading the side and everything looked rosy for him.
Phase 2 (SA tour, December 2006 to Australia tour to India, November 2008): Dravid featured in 25 test matches in which he scored only 1,317 runs at a paltry average of 30.62. He was in the worst slump of his career and, more often than not, looked completely out of sorts at crease. There were just two centuries by him – one against Bangaldesh and one against SA in Chennai when his innings of 111 from 291 balls looked completely useless in front of Sehwag’s better than run-a-ball 319. The only significant innings from him in this phase was 93 in Perth, which set up a famous win for India. He resigned from captaincy during this phase and nothing seemed to work for him.
Phase 3 (England tour to India, Dec 2008 to present India’s tour to NZ). Though this is a very small time period to classify as a phase, but, nonetheless it looks like a fresh start for Dravid. He hit a fine century against England in Mohali and his contribution in the ongoing NZ tour has been significant. It seems that Dravid has regained his lost touch, though, not looking as solid as he was in the first phase of his career.
Now, why is it that Rahul was doing so well towards the end of the first phase, but, suddenly lost the plot from SA tour in 2006. The interesting thing is that the Phase 2 in the above mentioned analysis coincides exactly with Sourav Ganguly’s comeback phase. Ganguly made his comeback in Dec. 2006 on India’s tour of SA, much to the dislike of Dravid and Chappell. Further, Dada retired after the recent test series against Aus. after which it seems that Dravid is somewhat coming back on the track.
This clearly suggests that Dada’s presence affected Dravid’s performance adversely and was instrumental in bringing about his downfall. I do not know whether there is even an iota of truthness in this. However, this reminds me of the endless discussions that we used to have amongst friends comparing Ganguly and Dravid. Wow, what an intense bit of arguments those used to be! Good old days…
Dada bhagwan hain.