His Middle Name is Sharad

I haven’t spoken about this incident much, with good reason too.

Firstly, no one would believe me.

Secondly…no there is only one reason.

I have had a phone conversation with Rahul Dravid.

Back when he was the brand ambassador of Bank of Baroda (thats for the "how" and "when") and I was a geeky student with braces (now with spectacles…sigh). Even though I wasn’t making much of a conversation, I was struck by the genuine friendliness of the man. Nothing pleases a cricket loving (all right, absolutely adoring) school kid more than being asked by the captain of the Indian Cricket team, “How are you and your friends doing?” and “Do you watch a lot of cricket?”. Quite appreciative when you consider that the best the other end could come up with was, “So, How’s the party?”

I was absolutely ecstatic that day. And absolutely devastated the day we crashed out of the World Cup. The matches were coming in late at night and I had a Board Exam on the morning after. I was supposed to be in bed, but I’d sneaked past my parents room to check on the scores. It was painful. And the faces of the balcony at Port-of-Spain, even more so. And the back lash that followed, absolutely horrific. The man who had led the same unit to a win in England in both tests and ODI formats just a few months back resigned. And was subsequently dropped. And surprisingly, apart from test cricket, almost forgotten.

So today, after almost four years of virtually no One Day cricket [sadly, Dravid will have never won a World Cup] after doing all the odd jobs in the recently concluded test matches, after being the only batsman to make any sort of runs, it surprised no one when he was called back to the One Day squad. What with Yuvraj and Zaheer injured and Sachin not in form and Gambhir (oh I dunno) also not at his best, the selectors looked about for someone with anything to give and to their least surprise they found him.

Dravid is set to officially withdraw from One-Day cricket after this series, but not after agreeing to lend a hand in a crisis situation, yet again. It seems that the Wall is finally done.

[PS- After several "Why don't you try Wordpress"s, I finally did try it. Check out my blog on wordpress HERE ]