PAST & PRESENT
The good man and the greater man
BY RAMACHANDRA GUHA
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Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble. What would the Indian cricket team do without these two players?
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Those heroes of my youth, G.R. Viswanath and B.S. Chandrasekhar, must now give way to Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble.
DEPENDABLE: Both Dravid and Kumble are quiet achievers. PHOTO: V.V. KRISHNAN
I ONCE wrote in these columns that "I don't care if India wins, so long as Dravid scores runs and Kumble gets wickets". A deluge of angry letters descended upon me, for choosing state over country.
Now, in that last, deciding Test match at Sabina Park, Dravid scored runs (a half-century in each innings), Kumble got wickets (seven in all, six of them in the final innings), and India won. The conflict between my readers and myself can thus — temporarily — be put to rest.
Most dependable
In our home, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble are known as the "greater man" and the "good man" respectively. WhenDravid made his Test debut in 1996, there was already a `great man" in the Indian side: Sachin Tendulkar. For several years, the Karnataka batsman played a loyal second fiddle; but then in 2002 his masterful 100 at Old Trafford brought him to the edge of greatness himself. The match-winning double 100 in Australia that followed placed him, at least, in Test matches, on par with the great man.
Then came that series-winning 270 in Pakistan, and we — my son and I — began, between ourselves, referring to him as the "greater man". In a crisis, and playing overseas, he was the most dependable of Indian batsmen, more so than Sachin, even more so than Sunil Gavaskar. His performances in the West Indies this summer, when he has had the added burden of captaincy, only confirm this.
Of course, Sachin retains this special place in our imagination. That he would, for batsmen who dazzle and sparkle, who play shots all their own, will enchant fans more than those who play strictly by the rule book. He could, and sometimes still can, destroy attacks in a manner Dravid never will. That is why Sachin's record in the one-day game is without parallel. But with India 10 for 2 in a Test match, with a match to be saved before it is to be won, one turns to Dravid before anyone else in the side.
Anil Kumble is a great spin bowler, but since the adjective has been overworked, we chose to call him the "good man". This was a salute to his decency of character, for he has never sledged a batsman, fought with an umpire, or intrigued against a team mate. It was also a tribute to his always placing the side ahead of himself, as in his resolute batsmanship down the order, or in his accepting without rancour the often puzzling — not to say inexplicable — decision to drop him from the one-day side.
Under-rated
No cricketer in Indian history has been more under-rated than Kumble, no one treated more shabbily by critics and fans alike. They said he could not spin the ball, and he gave them 500 wickets. They said he could bowl only on dusty tracks at home, and he won them Test matches in England, Australia, Pakistan and the West Indies (while winning them a good many in India too). In fact, when their careers are all ended and the calculations finally made, the good man shall be found to have won more Test matches (and series) than the great and the greater man combined. But this is a batsman's game, its rules and records and remembrances all biased against the bowlers.
In a book celebrating Indian cricket's triumphs of the 1970s, I identified our two Great Traditions as Bombay batsmanship and spin bowling. The first tradition is now greatly attenuated. But not, however, completely extinguished. It was Wasim Jaffer who first saved and then nearly won the first Test.
And it can be argued — although I will not make the argument — that Dravid is more or less a Bombay batsman, both because his mother tongue is Marathi, and because he bats in the classically orthodox manner of Gavaskar and Vijay Merchant, rather than like Southern stylists such as Mohammed Azharuddin and G.R. Viswanath.
At any rate, our second Great Tradition remains as robust as ever. Kumble and Harbhajan are superb exemplars of a tradition that began 100 years ago with Palwankar Baloo, and has been continued down the decades by the likes of Vinoo Mankad, Subas Gupte, Bishan Bedi and Erapalli Prasanna. Which is why it is so mystifying that the selectors persist in dropping one or the other.
If Harbhajan had been played alongside Kumble for the first two Tests of this series, perhaps India would have won three matches instead of one. And if Kumble had not been dropped from crucial one-day finals in recent years, our cupboard in that form of the game would not have been as bare.
The lesson, surely, of this tour of the West Indies is that the good man must play there as part of the Indian squad in the World Cup of 2007.
Some years ago, I chose an all-time Indian eleven with four Karnataka players in it. The time has now come to amend that selection. Those heroes of my youth, G.R. Viswanath and B.S. Chandrasekhar, must now give way to Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble. This, my readers will agree, is a fair and unbiased selection, motivated solely by their deeds for and on behalf of India. That they happen to be from the state of Karnataka may however be considered a (happy) accident.
E-mail the writer at ramguha@vsnl.com
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