Ponting’s goes on and on…

Now that is called fighting back tooth and nail. Well done, mister-angel-of-the-pub-brawls-fame, for pointing out that one Sunil Gavaskar was no angel in his playing days. The ‘vivid image of Gavaskar’ trying to take his partner back to the pavilion after being wrongly given out seems to still reverberate in Ricky Ponting’s mind every time he shuts his eye for a snooze. Or opens the mouth for booze. Or when he opens his trap for an interview. And then, it is also another former Indian captain, Anil Kumble, whom Ponting accuses of…plagiarism…that needs to be lauded. Very quick to realise it, one must add.

Both these incidents are pointers to the fact that Ponting knows a bit and more about cricketing history, and nothing about ever being apologetic about his or his team’s behaviour, ever.

So while his accusations, followed by his cheekily irritating grin, can land thick and fast, the fact that there was a blatant violation of rules in the Sydney test match; some of them his own doing, has clearly escaped the sharp mind of the Aussie captain. The truth, of his getting into an inebriated state and then creating a ruckus in a Kolkata pub had given rise to a rightful image of the ugly Aussie doesn’t seem to catch his eye too much. And another incident that doesn’t catch his eye – literally – was when he was knocked down with a black eye in another fisticuff in a Sydney bar, speaks volumes about the angelic nature of this great Australian skipper.

(click here to read more…)

It is a growing trend to have the fortune of watching that can be very easily termed as one of the best played, and then watch another one of better class and finesse, such that one has no option but to repeat the same cliché all over again; “it was the best ever one has seen”!

If Yuvraj Singh had bullied and battered the English into submission with such a once-in-a-lifetime knock just a couple of days back, then it was the turn of a little-sized pocket-dynamo by the name of Imran Nazir, to repeat the dose and give a glimpse of what might have been to the Pakistan Cricket Board.

Batting against a reasonable bowling line-up of the Hyderabad Heroes in the third final of the Indian Cricket League, Nazir smashed the first delivery of the inning by Abdul Razzaq for a shot that had six written all over it. The end result of the shot justified its potential. If there was ever a shot that stamped its authority on any match, this one had to rank close to the ones Sachin Tendulkar had smashed off the bowling of Glen McGrath in the Mini World Cup of 2000, and that hook off Andrew Caddick in the 2003 World Cup; both for maximum results. The rest of the inning was a total blur, a haze that was shaken away once the Lahore Badshahs had finally clinched the match.

In fact, in terms of sheer quality and the shock and awe factor, there was a huge similarity between this highlights package and the one that Tendulkar had exhibited in what would have been his first one-day international – but was later turned into an exhibition match – against Pakistan. At the age of less than sixteen, Tendulkar had galloped to an 18-ball 54, and smashed all bowling analysis to smithereens. He had been coerced, tempted, cajoled, and even begged into playing a false stroke then, but all, the bowlers had been successful in achieving was getting hit even further.

Nazir ended with an unbeaten 111 that came off only 44 deliveries against the Hyderabad Heroes. That is a small part of the whole story. The rest of the picture cannot be explained in words. What can be is that so savage was the attack that the opponents had given up even before he got into his fifth gear. For that matter, the entire duration of his knock was in the final gear. And while one cannot say that there wasn’t any hint of slogging, there was only so much that this format of the game deserves. The rest of them were pure, straight-batted, cricketing shots, that would have made any other top batsman proud. He ended with 11 sixes, arguably the most in a T20 inning.

The one other time when most Indian fans could remember Nazir play such a hand – or at least show the potential – was the final of the ICC World T20, against India. Batting in almost a similar vein, he had smashed Sreesanth for a couple of fours and then given him an equal dose of sixes, to almost take the match away from the Indians. His 33 had come off only 14 deliveries, and in the end, it had taken an excellent direct hit to run him out. Had he gone on, the match may have gotten over in half the overs, and who knows, M.S. Dhoni may not have been the captain that he is today.

Hypothesis I agree, yet, I have no doubt in my mind that the Pakistanis have lost out on a talent that they failed to harness. Looking forward to many more such knocks from Nazir.

Neo Cricket finds an ESScape route?

I haven’t checked up the history of sports broadcasting yet, but this must rank as one of the most surprising, if not shocking, pieces of advertising strategy that any sports TV channel must have envisioned for themselves. The Indian cricket pie is shared by a very exclusive list of Indian sports channels, and this includes Neo Cricket, ESPN-Star and Ten Sports – and Zee Sports if you include the ICL. With the battle-lines been already drawn amongst these entities, what with the likes of Zee Sports even paying back BCCI in the same coin as Kerry Packer had about three decades ago, imagine the stunned reaction one would have had when one saw ESS’s Champions League of cricket as one of the main sponsors of the India-England ODI series, that was to be broadcast on Neo!  

Advertising on a rival channel is something quite unheard of, especially in Indian television, and this is why one needs to mull over the reasons for the same. And after scratching my head, the one cause that I can conjure is that most of these sports channels know of the division of the cricket rights for the next so many years have been already decided, and so, infiltration into each others’ property would be next to impossible. As compared to entertainment channels that could draw the audiences away by slotting a show of a similar genre at the same time, both the cricket channels would be exhibiting mutually exclusive cricket. Thus, in the end, it wasn’t such a bad idea to showcase the adverts on Neo Cricket, during the India-England series.  

From Neo’s perspective, the world recession may have meant that getting sponsors for a low-key series like the India-England one, coming at the back of the high-profile Border-Gavaskar trophy, would have been an arduous job. ESS would have, in fact, provided them with a welcome relief. 

…and ECB bend backward…again! 

It has been reported that the ECB officials – including the chief Giles Clarke – would be in a close huddle with the IPL commissioner Lalit Modi to try and resolve the clashes that the premier tournament would have with English international cricket. Or the other way around. This, to my mind means only one thing; the ECB has failed to in its bid to dissuade the English cricketers from avoiding the IPL and concentrating on international cricket instead. And with the future of the Stanford Twenty20 in, euphemistically put, trouble, ECB has had no option but to approach the likes of Modi. 

What transpires in the meeting would decide the future of the English players vis-à-vis the IPL, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the English board didn’t bend further back to appease the BCCI, now that they have come in for a rather heavy criticism by the media and others alike for the ‘Great PR disaster’ called Stanford T20.  

Modi has already made it clear that the likes of Kevin Pietersen would have to commit a desired number of matches in the 2009 version of the IPL, if they wanted to be a part. With either Sri Lanka or West Indies lined up to be involved in an international series with England, one doesn’t see how would the deadlock get resolved without one or more parties making a compromise.  

And for now, the only entity that looks like they would have to make that, is the ECB!

Footnote: The Champions League of Cricket, the first of its kind would commence from the 3^rd of December. It would be an eight day event, and would feature eight clubs from five countries in its first season.

Just when one thought that Yuvraj Singh could have been discounted from a pre-match, English team discussion, he roared back into the limelight with an inning of the lifetime – his anyways – that sealed the English fate even before the second inning begun. Just when one assumed that his poor form in both the formats of the game – and in the first match of the Ranji trophy this season – would have ensured a Herculean pressure of sorts on his shoulders, he ensured that all those yapping ‘Toms’ would be shut out for the time being. And just when one thought that the Sehwag-Gambhir combination had done their bit to make it a difficult task for the ones to follow, Yuvraj Singh not only had his cake, but ate it with panache and smeared the rest on the English faces.

It is difficult to put words to an inning of such destructive effect. Had it been a battleground, one could have been tempted to call his bat as a weapon of mass destruction. Had it needed comparisons, it would have probably ranked close to a Viv Richards masterpiece, almost akin to that century that he had bulldozed in the 1979 World Cup final. The ferocity of the attack was so savage that it would be a wonder even if the English bowlers came back to the park for the next match. The start to his innings was more to do with self-preservation, and even during that part of the inning, Yuvraj had no qualms in taking on the short ball, his purported weakness.

One must say that those couple of pulls did not appear too attractive, but achieved the desired result for the batsman and his team.

As he grew in confidence, it also seemed like he had grown in muscle. The shots began to flow like the $20 million which had flown out of the English hands in the previous week, while the sixes rained like the Mumbai monsoons. Statistics wouldn’t do much justice in describing the murder, but I shall try nevertheless. His first 12 balls saw him score only six, while the next two sets of 12 deliveries each cost the English 17 and 14 respectively. 23 came off the 12 after that, making it 60 off the first 48 deliveries.

As if this wasn’t enough, it was carnage after that. 78 came in his next 30 deliveries, and to hit it harder, 78 had come in the five overs he faced!

The one stroke, though, that remained etched in my mind was his half-forward-prod-half-aggressive-heave, that had a follow-through as minimal as Tendulkar has when he punches one down to the extra-cover fence, and yet, it went for the maximum. Most in the crowd gasped in a reaction that consisted of delight, shock and awe, all packaged in one, but Yuvi wasn’t done, as he repeated that shot one more time. This time, it looked like a golfer teeing off with half the club-swing! Quite clearly, the black coloured band around his waist had no effect – at least any adverse one at least – on his savage artistry, as he kept wincing in pain, and then kept depositing the deliveries to all parts of the ground.

However, one must keep the bigger picture in mind, as this was Yuvraj’s first match of the international season. Coming off a rather lean one, Yuvraj would have to continue in the same vein – even half of it would do in fact – to repay the faith that many of the cricket aficionados have shown in the southpaw.

It’s a long season ahead!

Have you seen those tiny toddlers push and shove and slap and call each other names? And then go running to respective folks back with a cry that belie the innocent nature of their fight? Some of the Indian and Aussie cricketers cannot be perceived too differently from the aforesaid mentioned situation, as they never cease their garb; and continue hogging the limelight for all the reasons not quite cricketing.  

Matthew Hayden and Harbhajan Singh may not have exactly kissed, but from the outside, it did look like they had made up. So handshakes and pats on each other’s back were as commonplace during the series as a Rahul Dravid failure these days. However, just when one thought everything would be just fine, the verbal volleys chose to ignore the unofficial cease-fire between the two teams and were let rip on to the media and the unsuspecting public.  

For now, it is almost a day before the start of the new series against England, but both, Harbhajan Singh and Gautam Gambhir do not seem to have stopped rubbing into the Aussie skipper’s wounds. So, while Harbhajan has never made any bones about who his favourite bunny was – and is and will always remain in his words – he went on to add that no spinner would have too much difficulty in getting the better of the Aussie captain. His exact words were, “I think whenever the pressure comes he still remains my bunny. I think any spinner can get him out early.” Clearly, the attempt at truce by Ponting had not been working too well this time, in front of the angry – or the angriest – young man of Indian cricket in recent times. Incidentally, Ponting had praised the wily sardar’s batting and said that he is much better than what his average suggests. 

However, the funnier and almost the wittiest comment came when Bhajji derided the Aussie habit of bringing out books at the most inopportune of the times, which said that while the Aussies kept penning their rumblings against the Indians down, the Indian team practiced hard on the cricket fields! One must remember that in the last one month or so, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Ricky Ponting have revealed the anguish that the entire Aussie team went through after the Sydneygate and it doesn’t require a rocket scientist to decipher who, they thought was responsible.  

Gambhir, the other – for want of anything better – angry young man of the Indian team, on the other hand, showed no remorse for the shoving of his elbow into Shane Watson, and questioned some of the profanities that the Aussies usually utter. I wonder whether there are any such rules in the ICC for pleading guilty in front of the match referee and then going on to say that ‘I-don’t-regret-nothing-dude’.  

At the other end of spectrum, Hayden seems to have had a lot of bottled anger against the country of India and anything Indians, where he seems to have been fed up of the long lines, and the heat, and the flies and the bees – and probably the birds – and the sight-screens and probably even the people and the cricketers. Even if you discount the bolt of hyperbole in the previous line, Hayden could have very well avoided the statement, “Often we find ourselves waiting with hands on hips for someone to face up or someone on the sight board to move away or some of those little frustrations happening with third world countries.”  

Quite clearly, shooting from the lips and NOT using something at the top-most storey of his anatomy go hand-in-hand for this burly Queenslander. 

Hopefully, the sides’ new opponents in England and New Zealand respectively would ensure a much quieter, and a more interesting series.

If ever one wanted to watch someone attempting to shoot oneself to death, the Indian batting in the second session of the fourth day’s play in the final test match between India and Australia was an apt sample. And if ever someone wanted to see someone preventing suicide and then committing it oneself, it had to be the final session of the very same day’s play! Just when one thought that the Indians had committed the biggest hara-kiri of the series, the Australians decided to play ‘party-poopers’ and did the unimaginable that they had been attempting to through the four test matches.

Unfortunately, with it, went most of the probability of trying to eke out a win and lay a hold on the Gavaskar-Border trophy.

For starters, after having conceded a lead of 86, the Australians seemed to be on the mat, when Virender Sehwag and debutant, M. Vijay, had added more than 100 for the first wicket. However, soon after lunch, Shane Watson brought the visitors back into the match with a couple of quick wickets, and very soon, Sehwag departed for a well made 90. VVS Laxman struggled to score for a reasonable length of time and then was stunned by a Jason Krejza off-spinner that turned more than the proverbial mile. Sourav Ganguly’s swansong lasted all of a single delivery, and when Sachin Tendulkar went brain-dead for a split second – and ran himself out – the writing looked to be on the wall for the hosts.

Watson had been reversing the ball like never seen before in the series, and even a sick-looking Brett Lee looked to have found his rhythm. With only skipper Dhoni as the last recognised batsman at the crease, it required some tight bowling from Krejza at one end, and the quicker men at the other, in the final session to restrict India to a lead of anywhere between 280 and 300.

Instead, the skipper decided to go ahead with Cameron White, Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke to support Krejza at the other end! Such was the waywardness of the bowling attack that the runs were picked up with consummate ease, and a hundred run, seventh wicket partnership ensued. The explanation doled out was a rather meek ‘slow over-rate’ that could have caused the captain from being banned from a test match. However, it beggared absolute disbelief that an Australian captain had kept his own interests above his team’s – and for some, even his country’s – and decided to improve the falling over-rate than go for the juggernaut.

I would term it as nothing but a clear cut case of misplaced priorities at best, and a dazzling height of selfishness at worst. The disbelief was evident on most Aussie commentators’ voice, while it was only natural that their Indian counterparts rubbed their hands in a pleasantly surprised glee.

To end this piece, I would like to cite another match that was concurrently being played between Australia and England elsewhere, at the Hong Kong sixes. It was the final of the two-day event, and the Aussies seemed to have the match in the bag, with only two runs needed for a win off the last couple of deliveries. With only four fielders allowed, and totals of 100 plus in five overs a norm rather than an exception, it seemed that the Aussies had it all covered. The Aussies choked, the match was tied, but the English were declared the champions, because they had lost lesser number of wickets.

It may not have a lot of relevance to international cricket, but it sure was strange to see an Aussie team choke at the death. Just like it was shocking to watch another, play a brand of cricket that would stir most of the Aussie greats of the yesteryears in their graves.

Is the tide finally turning against Australia?

At the end-of-the-day press conference, one of the scribes posed a rather relevant question to Simon Katich, who had come to represent his team there. It had been a puzzle that many had tried to decipher through the day’s play, but none had been able to; why had the Aussies not gone after the Indian bowling and taken it on, despite been 0-1 down in the series. It wouldn’t have taken too many boundaries to leak through the on-side for the Indian skipper to change things around and normalcy could just have been restored after that.

The moot point here was that the Aussies are trailing the Indians, and to accentuate this problem, they would need to bat last on a surface that is not improving by any stretch of imagination. Yet, there was no sense of urgency from their end to take the bull by its horns and get to within touching distance of the Indian total. Instead, the runs came as much in trickles as the global liquidity of today’s day and age, and the tourists struggled to only 166 runs in almost 86 overs they faced through the day!

Katich’s reply was a rather astounding, “This is the most stupid question I have heard”!

Now, does that imply that the Australian counter-strategy was to continue batting the way they did till the Indian bowlers tired out, and begun to resume their normal lines and lengths? If that was what the tactic of the men from Down Under was, then one must agree that it wasn’t a defensive move, but something that was smacked in either total confusion or one that lacked any clear direction.

Quite clearly, the Aussies had been surprised. A highly potent dosage of their own medicine that they had forced onto India in 2004 had been very slyly – and intelligently – used on them, and before they even realised what had transpired, it had already happened.

However, it was not so much the shock that surprises me, but the inability of the Australians to respond to the same even after the same been carried out through to the end of the day that is a little disconcerting. Unfortunately, it did get doled out to them at a time when they did not have any option but to counter it, given the state in which the series was. However, there may have been that sneaking thought about the Indian bowlers tiring out beyond a certain point and then it would have been easier to take advantage of these very tactics. This only multiplied the Aussie woes to an unimaginable extent. As it turned out, Zaheer Khan bowled over after over, and what was even more creditable was that his rarely wavered from his extremely frustrating line of three to four stumps outside the off-stump.

The lunch break did nothing to alleviate the Aussie-cold-feet, and in a bid to be not sucked into the purported quagmire, they ended up with almost nothing on the board. It was only after Cameron White began to show some of the magic that he has been famous for back home, that the Australians got some more runs on the board. But, by that time, there had been enough questions that had filled many a fan’s head with queries galore.

For me, this strategy used by Dhoni could have just been one of the biggest cricketing coups of recent times! Whether the Aussies are able to get out of the hole they have dug so beautifully for themselves should be now dependent on their wafer-thin bowling line-up; Jason Krejza notwithstanding!

The baby-step that Team India had taken even before the fourth test match between India and Australia had begun by winning the toss, was converting into something much more substantial by the end of the day’s play. At stumps, India was 311/5, and already looks like in a position of strength, on a pitch on which a virtually unknown Jason Krejza extracted enough turn to not only worry the Indian batsmen, but also his own top order.

However, even before one gets there, the talking point of the day was Sachin Tendulkar’s 40^th test century, which was effective in terms of the situation it came in, but not one of the best that Tendulkar has scored. In between being dropped a couple of times and a muffed up run-out chance, Tendulkar played some delightful shots off his pads and straight down the wicket to get to his ton. Against Krejza, he looked comfortable each time he defended and played to the merit of the ball, but on occasions that he pre-meditated, and tried to invent something out of the thin air, the bowler caused him more problems than one. In fact, both the chances were of Krejza’s bowling.

The other two fifties of the day came from the blades of VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwag, and they couldn’t have been more contrasting in nature. Well, for that matter, the backdrop against which the two were scored was also vastly different. Sehwag’s was a typical buccaneering effort, plundering runs at his own free will, before succumbing to the temptation against a bowler whom he does not seem to regard as one. Laxman, on the other hand, came to the crease with the Indians struggling after having lost three quick wickets. In the company of the century-maker, he consolidated the Indian inning, and his scoring was anything but Sehwag-like. The on-driving, a la forehand style, through the mid-on region kept coming, as he got to a 64.

The two failures, so to say, from the opposing camps were of Rahul Dravid and Brett Lee; again if I may add. Dravid’s story has become a cliché ever since he gave up his captaincy, and today’s dismissal was reminiscent of the kind of lack of any kind of confidence in his batting. Lee almost did a Stephen Harmison – of the 2006-07 Ashes fame – when his first delivery of the match was so far off the mark that it was deemed a wide. Things only marginally improved for him after that, and without any swing or seam movement, one cannot see how Lee can get himself some figures in that elusive fourth bowling analysis column.

A word about the omni-present slow Australian over-rates. I cannot remember too many occasions in this series when Ponting has been able to finish off his overs in time. In fact, incidents like today, when, despite having two frontline spinners in the team, failing to bowl the stipulated ninety overs in a day’s play after been afforded the extra half over, have reared their heads far too often. In fact, right through out the series, the Aussie over-rate has barely exceeded 13 overs to the hour, which is appalling considering what is expected of modern captains. It also speaks volumes about the confusions in the skipper’s mind about bowling and fielding changes. I wonder though, whether Chris Broad would be ‘man-enough’ to do something about this menace, or he would continue to be the Aussie yes-man.

With the pitch playing the way it did today, the two slower bowlers from Indian – three if one includes Sehwag – would be licking more than just their fingers. The wicket was grassless, and in around thirty minutes from the start, had started showing up the footmarks of the bowlers’ follow-through. Interesting couple of days ahead!

Playing the victim is a trait that BCCI has seemed to have embodied for far too long, none too bigger than when Harbhajan Singh was said to be victimised by messrs Procter and company at Sydney this year. Without getting into the merits or demerits of the overturning of ban then, and that is simply because it had left the cricketing ‘ring’, and entered the realms of a legal wrangle, the final decision was only fair.

Gautam Gambhir is a different story altogether. One may not have the cognizance of the entire sequence of events leading upto the elbow-gate, there are two facts that are as clear as a crystal. One is the fact that the Aussies did not get physical with the batsman in question, and the second one is the video that shows Gambhir jutting his elbow out to smack the gut of one Shane Watson. Given the above premise, and the history of Gambhir’s histrionics, the one match ban was anything but unfair. At the expense of sounding a little clichéd, if such incidents are allowed to be pardoned – and by that I mean, letting off with even fines of 100% match fee – then the likes of Matthew Hayden are absolutely on the mark in calling an Ishant Sharma into the boxing ring for provocating him. At least Hayden had the ‘courtesy’ to invite the bowler instead of flexing his muscles then and there itself.

Watson, Simon Katich and even an ever remorseless Ricky Ponting may have been wrong in getting into a verbal duel with the Indian opener, but the fact of the matter is that Gambhir was foolish to get as involved as he did. If the Nagpur ban does get upheld – and I certainly hope it does – it would not only mean a personal blot on his resume, but also be an issue for the Indians as a team. Gambhir had been in sublime touch, and the Australians looked as clueless as they have looked against VVS Laxman to get him out of the way. To expect someone else – and for God’s sake it isn’t Rahul Dravid – to fill in the boots in a crucial match like this, would be akin to expecting the moon. There is no doubt in my mind that Gambhir has let his team down.

Having said that, I am sorely disappointed with Chris Broad’s ‘selective blindness’. While the Gambhir decision was only right, I am appalled to find that the Aussie duo of Watson and Simon Katich have got away without even a proverbial rap on the knuckle. Watson was fined 10% of the fee, while Katich, who looked to have obstructed Gambhir even more blatantly than Watson, wasn’t even booked! A couple of replays are enough to reach the conclusion that when Gambhir tried to set off for the single at the non-striker’s end, Katich wasn’t doing the stopping to invite him for a party. I am surprised that Broad chickened out of handing a penalty to the left-handed Aussie opener, given that he had particular fondness for the Aussie bowling attack during his playing days.

Quite clearly, to quote Adam Gilchrist from his autobiography, there are ‘different strokes for different folks’ in the Chris Broad rule-book!

Sourav Ganguly has announced his retirement, and despite the bitterness he exhibits each time he speaks to the media, the limelight is off him; for now. Sachin Tendulkar has done more than his bit in the on-going series and averages more than fifty. And yesterday, VVS Laxman of the ‘supple-as-rubber’ wrists fame got to an unbeaten double century against his favourite opponents to boost his run-tally up, and the critics out, of the hearing distance for now. 

This has left Rahul Dravid a very lonely man. Unfortunately, he has been the one batsman who has not yet made his mark on the series. A fifty to start the series off with, one expected him to return back to his prolific form as we know him. However, his form has only deteriorated over the next couple of test matches. In fact, at the expense of sounding a bit harsh, I wouldn’t be too off the mark if I said that he is back to where he started at the start of the series. In the dozen or so test matches before the commencement of this Border-Gavaskar competition, Dravid had managed to conjure up the runs at a very un-Dravid like average of around 30, and it has been no different in this series.

For long now – almost since he first made that switch from the lower-middle order batsman to one-drop, Dravid has played his part to the tee. There have been times through his career, when the Indian selectors have juggled around with the opening combination like a clown – no puns intended – with his balls, and yet, he has had to invariably come to bat in the first couple of overs of the innings. He has had the tough task of facing up to the new ball under conditions which are at best most alien to the best of batsmen. Yet, his straight batted defence has led many an expert to christen him as one of the best, if not the best, in the world.

One of those rare Indians who could bat against spin or genuine pace with consummate ease, at both, home and away, Dravid’s extended purple patch came under the captaincy of Sourav Ganguly, when he formed an essential core of a team that had started to learn winning abroad.

Captaincy was the next obvious progression, and this great student of the game won matches in South Africa and England, something of a rarity in the history of Indian cricket. Yet, he resigned from his position, due to alleged differences with the erstwhile chief of Indian selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar. The rot in his batting – and this is in comparison with his near-60 average in tests – had just about set in. One thought that with the rigors of captaincy off his shoulders – and mind – he would be able to resurrect the same and get back to being his best.

Unfortunately, the same hasn’t happened. A century against South Africa in the interim did raise hopes, but the Sri Lankan series had him totally mesmerized by the Mendis-deception.

The reason, I think, could be two-fold. For one, Dravid’s impregnable defence has been penetrated to an extent. Never have I seen him edge so many to the slip cordon as he has in the last ten months or so, as Mitchell Johnson has been a consistent trouble-maker for this Banglorean. The other reason could be his lapses of concentration after a reasonable stint at the crease. Never have I seen Dravid getting so many starts, and yet, not going on to make something big. The other worrying factor is that even on the field, Dravid looks lost, almost desolate, while fielding in the slips.

However, to his credit, he has not dropped anything near his sight, and this gives me a little hope, that not all is wrong with him. Probably, it is a question of just one big inning, and with the fourth test match in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar series to be played at Nagpur, his ‘sasural’, it could just be the right omen for this cricketing great.

For his sake, one hopes so, however, one also gets a sense that behind that quiet demeanour at slips, Dravid could very well be thinking of a one last hurrah and then calling it quits from international cricket.