For Dravid, from the rafters

Dear Dilip Vengsarkar,

It has been six days since you and your wise brethren decided that it would do Indian cricket a world of good if Rahul Dravid was dropped from the team for the first two ODIs against Pakistan. Since then newsprint and tapes have been generously utilised by former players and scholarly sports journalists to comment and analyse the considered opinion of you and your brethren.

In this regard Colonel I beg you to listen to my, the faceless cricket fan’s, the one who burns in the rafters in our ‘grand’ stadiums, the one who silently takes the many hours and the heaps of abuse and contempt to get to his place in the aisles you probably don’t know exist’s; two paise worth of views on the issue. Sorry, I got a bit carried away with my description but then I wanted you to place me right.

You of course, with your penchant for semantics said he was only being ‘rested’. Perhaps he had just stepped back on earth after having spent more than six months in space, a L’a Miss Williams and needed time and rest to get back to the ways of us earthlings.

I hope my dear colonel that you don’t mind my calling you a earthling, for as every Ranji player, for that matter any player knows, you and your colleagues are no ordinary mortals but like our Gods, are full of Maya. Your actions are enveloped in intrigue that nobody can fathom. But I am this two-paise-bum-burned-in-the-rafters character so I hope you will excuse my semantic slip-ups.

See, I have again digressed from the purpose of writing this letter so let me come back to it. So, maybe Rahul Dravid secretly went for a hike to Mount Everest and is none the better for it and deserved the rest so graciously given by you. For if it is not the two above reasons, then Colonel, I fail to understand (admittedly my understanding is not as good as yours but still) why the monk-in-flannels, the one who could bring sanity even in the outrageously heady atmosphere of the rafters is not in the team.

We, the faceless fans, have seen all kinds of batsmen come and go. From the two Vijay’s,no make it three Vijay’s must add Manjrekar also, the Nwabab, the hurricane from Haryana, the best square cutter, the original little master, your own good-at-lords-average-elsewhere self, the once in a lifetime Tendulkar to the god in the offside Sourav. Also the many Amres and Kamblis in between. And then there been this Dravid fellow, you know the one who had nothing ostentatiously extraordinary but who in our not-so-considered opinion became possibly the most extraordinary of them all.

I can see you Colonel smirking and saying there goes another emotional fan, for we at the rafters have been know for such outbursts as Dada would vouch but pray hear me out.

I and many like us were not enamoured with him when he first came. He looked all right though. The bat came straight, the head was steady, the footwork precise (yes even we know such things) which is not what you can say about our many stars for the ‘morrow but more on that later.

We did not like him just because of this. In the madhouse that one day cricket often is, he was one sobering factor. When the others were plonking their foot down and competing with woodcutters he was a classical. When others were mistiming shots that modern bats carried all the way, he was showing them the whole breadth of the willow. We at the aisles-you-don’t-care about were exasperated by this. Used to applauding sixes it took time for us to see his worth.

But eventually the realization came. We saw it time after and time and innings after innings. For whenever there was something in the pitch, whenever it turned like a drunken serpent waltzing, whenever the ball came off the pitch to the throat, possessed with a malicious glee that shone in the eyes, when the woodcutters and the pretenders had shown that their true colour was yellow, he fought on. At J’burg, at Lords, at Adelaide and many times in the dried- paddy- fields-like pitches of our country.

His kissing the India crest after scoring the wining run in Adelaide sealed it for us. He is no genius, never has been, but I will say this when it was the most difficult to bat, when it was the most important to bat, he never let us down. If Sachin has been the genius, the gifted swordsman who could cut through whole armies, though some would like to add not when we wanted it the most, then he has been the one standing at the gates of the castle and it here we say that never once did he budge, not when we wanted him to stay put. That is why he is extraordinary.

So Colonel we come again to this question of why he was not picked? You say the old ones have to be phased out, as if they come with a sell by date. As if youth come with a predetermined induction date. To be in the team us at the rafters feel you should have earned that irrespective of age.

Not many of your beacons for tomorrow have done it. Raina the eager pup that he is has not. Not at the cost of Dravid anyway. Nor has Dinesd Karthick. And not even Sehwag, for after maybe 89 matches of hit and miss even I will strike gold.

One bad series cannot justify his ouster, we the faceless fans, very strongly feel. Platinum and quartz cannot have the same yardstick. As far as that goes Colonel, I would also like to add that you don’t replace a Rolls Royce with a Maruti.

As far as a this fielding thing is considered, I will ask you one question. When the scoreboard says India 5/3 who would you want to be there? Search in your heart and see if you can come up with a name that spells different from Rahul Sharad Dravid,? We at the rafters don’t think so. I will bet my burnt-at-the-rafters-bum on it.

Thank You,

A faceless fan,

From an obscure rafter.