Rahul Dravid - My tiny story

There are people I admire, people I aspire to be like and people that remind me that true greatness is not achieved just by doing what you do best but by also making sure that your feet stay firmly on the ground - a quality that many in the public eye do not possess in the smallest measure, when success knocks on their door. For me, Rahul Dravid ticked every box that had to be ticked and more. Unassuming, humble and of course a legend of the game of cricket, Dravid's presence in the Indian cricket team will be sorely missed. 

Every Dravid fan will remember him by one or some of his greatest innings. Perhaps he will also be remembered for being the true gentleman that he is. He has played some of the truly outstanding innings of all time. The one that I will treasure though is not one that might come to your mind immediately when you think of Rahul Dravid. The one I'm talking about is his century on the third day of the first Test between India and England at Lord's on July 23, 2011. It did not lead to an India win nor was it Dravid's finest knock by any stretch of imagination. I will treasure it purely because I was there that day to witness the genius in action. Call me a show-off if you wil, but hey, I witnessed a Dravid hundred at Lord's; why shouldn't I boast? 

Images courtesy: www.espncricinfo.com 

I'm more of an armchair cricket fan. I can count the number of cricket games I have attended, double that number and I'll still have fingers left to count on my hand. Tickets for the Lord’s game were at a premium. In fact, I tried but I did not succeed in getting one. The only ticket I could book in advance was one to the final day of the Oval Test of the same series (when my friends and I were witness to a great knock by Sachin Tendulkar who eventually missed his 100th hundred). 

The 22nd of July 2011 was just another day for me. I had got back home after work, when the phone rang. A friend had a spare ticket to the third day's play which he had managed to get at nearly double the original price. Team India in England, first Test of the series, India to bat the next day, Tendulkar on the verge of a hundred centuries. Like any sensible fan, I did not pause to think. 

I stood outside the gates at Lord’s with my friend and one of his friends. I realized that they had two tickets and the third was to be given to us at the ground by the person who sold it to them online. We waited... and waited.... the crowd swelled and I was tense. There was no sign of the guy. Calling him  only took us to his voice mailbox. Finally, after a number of attempts, he answered. He had arrived at St. John's Wood (the nearest tube station). He had more to say. His ticket had been stolen from his pocket on his way to the ground. We thought we'd been cheated, but at least he did turn up and return the money that was paid to him. Now then, I could not even consider going back home after the excitement which had started building up inside me from the previous night. I had dreamed of watching a Tendulkar century, not just any century, but this hundredth. A huge milestone, one that many cricket fans are still hoping they will be lucky enough to see. After all Sachin is another living legend who I have admired for so many years now. We had no choice. We approached touts who were selling tickets at premium prices. Maybe encouraging ticket touts wasn't the best thing to do. But for just this once, it was. Tickets in hand, we proceeded to our seats. We were late, the game had begun. 

Sitting right below the media centre, I took in the atmosphere. I was at Lord’s. Abhinav Mukund was at the crease. As he was from Chennai (the place I relate to in domestic cricket terms), I was quite eager to see how he did. At the other end Gambhir fell to Broad. Dravid walked in to warm applause, from both sets of fans, applause that was also filled with genuine respect. He got down to business as usual. Then Mukund too left the crease for a well crafted 49. 


All of a sudden, the noise at the ground reached fever pitch (for Lord’s standards). I got my phone out to capture a video of the great man walking in. The crowd rose to its feet, some sections went slightly mental (me included). The stadium had erupted as Sachin Tendulkar walked in. The ground had been buzzing since the gates opened. Everyone at the ground - English, Indian and people of every other nationality that was there - wanted to see a Tendulkar ton. Now the stage was his. Every run he made was cheered, boundaries were met with reactions normally saved for moments that won matches. Dravid's only duty, from the fans' point of view, seemed to just be to hand strike back to the Little Master. But some sparkling strokes later, Sachin was dismissed. A lot of us felt we had missed out. Will this opportunity come again? 

It was after tea. I was only now beginning to truly appreciate - in the middle of all the carnage - the sheer class of an innings being played by Rahul Dravid  - a knock of full of guts, sublime technique and unshakeable mental strength. When he ran the 2 runs which took him to his century, Lord’s was on its feet. The applause started. It seemed to never end. Dravid punched the air, showed emotions he not often does and celebrated. An English fan next to me turned to me and said, "Absolute legend. Forget Sachin, this is the guy you Indian fans should be praising to the sky more often". Not the exact words, but definitely on those lines. The applause went on. When he left the field after having played through the entire innings, the crowd rose again to show their appreciation for another truly fantastic innings by Rahul Dravid.

After the day's play, I stood, along with a group of fellow Indian fans, behind the Indian dressing room and managed to catch a glimpse of the man from close quarters. Even after that gem of a display though, most of the screams were for Tendulkar. Everyone wanted to see "God". I proceeded to take a self conducted tour of the ground and was lucky to mutter a few words to Sunil Gavaskar as he left the ground. I sent a text to a couple of friends. It read "Met Gavaskar... unfortunately I didn't know what the hell to say to him". I spoke to a couple of friends. The longest part of the conversation was reserved to mention/boast about my "meeting" with Gavaskar. 

Looking back now, that day at Lord’s, summed up most if not all of what Rahul Dravid is about, for me. Rarely was Dravid in the limelight. Rarely has he been given the credit he's due. We took him for granted even though he's not only fancied some of India's greatest wins, but also allowed the team a to take home semblance of respect in devastating defeats like the one in this Lord’s Test. 


The man cannot be praised enough. It will be futile for me to try and explain the magnitude of his achievements. Even when he has decided to retire, he didn't announce it one Test match ahead, so the cricket world would focus on him for 5 days and eulogise his career. Dravid retired - like he would do anything else - with class. Plain and simple. Thank you, Rahul Dravid. I salute you. The game of cricket may never be the same again. 


Update: If you haven't listened to Dravid speak at the Sir Donald Bradman Oration in December 2011, please do. Every word is worth it. 

Investment and sustainable investment

Dear group members of the Beautiful Game, I'll try my best to be neutral here. I started responding to Anand's post ("Monetary investment is fine in a free economic world") on the comments thread, but as I kept typing, I feared anyone seeing a comment of that size wouldn't bother reading through. So this is for those of you who would have been interested in doing so,  presented in the uncluttered environs of Plumb in Front (pretty shameless eh...? So what!). Read on I say...

Before I start on other clubs, I'd like to say that I AM aware of the fact that even the club I support was at one point a benefactor in terms of revenue (rather unfairly, you can say). David Dein, an Arsenal fan who invested in the club was a fanatic and would do anything to see his club at the top. Pre-Wenger he had a huge influence on anything that went on at Arsenal. Dein - after becoming chairman of the Football League Management Committee (FLMC) - along with a few others championed the deal with ITV in 1988 for exclusive rights to home games, that saw the top 5 teams getting a lion's share of TV revenue for a few years. This obviously gave these clubs (Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Tottenham and one more which I can't remember) a significant financial advantage. The formation of the Premier League, meant that these clubs could negotiate better commercial deals (naturally) even though the TV revenue was then distributed evenly once Sky took over. What I'm getting at is that, at the end of the day any club/business will do what (it thinks) is best for itself. Dein and Co., definitely gave the top 5 an edge and its probably the implications of this deal that saw these clubs more successful in the years that followed.

"Monetary investment is fine in a free economic world" - 90% correct. 

"Sustainable monetary investment is fine in a free economic world." - is 100% correct, as far as I'm concerned. 

At a time when the world's markets are plunging, football seems to be (actually is) thriving in a different solar system. It's unsustainable and it should stop. It will stop. At least that's what I think.

I accept that for a club outside the previous Big Four, the ONLY way to get in amongst them was to spend BIG. The dominance of these clubs would have otherwise definitely continued and we wouldn't have reached this point at which we are witnessing an exciting league with no real big four any more.

While I acknowledge that there had to be spending to give the traditional big teams a run for their money, the manner in which this has been carried out is what makes me give no importance to the success (that may be) achieved as a result. The methods employed by City and in years past by Chelsea astound me for the short termism in decision making. Chelsea's mad spree started in 2003-04 (am I right there?), yet almost a decade letter, I'm not sure they can say they've built up a club that is envied by anyone. Trophies yes. What else? How many managers have stayed there for more than... a year? Can they say they're completely stable? What if Abramovich decides to pack his bags and leave to invest in a kabaddi team in 2019 (assuming we have the Indian Kabaddi League set up by then)? How many players have they invested in from a very young age by buying them at a reasonable cost (sorry but £50m is not reasonable)? How many outstanding players have come through their academy? In my mind, the commercial clout and everything else that Chelsea gained after the first few trophies started pouring in, should have been made use of sensibly, to build a long term plan, a plan that should have considered becoming even more successful by forming foundations that would have seen them dominate, not through further spending sprees, but through an excellent system supplemented by intelligent purchases in the transfer market. I don't see that kind of system in place. After almost of decade of a foreign investor coming in, there are just too many uncomfortable questions. 

From what we've seen from Manchester City in the last two years, they seem to be heading down the same path, although this made me 0.0001% more interested in what they're trying to achieve. Even if I was a Man City supporter, I would have been utterly flabbergasted when I heard about the scale of losses that were posted last year. Only one word comes to mind. Unsustainable. A trophy at the end of such massive spending is a minimum requirement and won't be a truly great achievement. Anything less would be a complete/utter disaster. In fact their exit from the Champions League in the group stages is already for me the flop of the season. 

I actually hope they win the domestic league in a way, because I'm curious to see how they will build on that. A successful team will financially strengthen the whole club. The question that remains is, will trophies be used as a platform to build on or will it just be the start of a never ending obsession to win-at-any-cost(£££)? That for me will determine whether they're class or classless. This is not aimed at the fans but just at the way this/these club(s) is(are) run.

As a football fan, I'd like my team to win things, but that doesn't look likely in the current climate. Trophies would be great, but it's not an obsession - which it is for many - for me. Arsenal may not win anything this year (Champions league maybe.. heh) or the next year or the year after that, but Arsene Wenger will continue to be a genius in my mind, for the culture he's cultivated at the club; someone who has ensured that this club will be in good stead even years after he eventually says goodbye. Arsenal for me will be a successful club as it is now. We'll be back in the reckoning for silverware when the football bubble bursts. It surely will. Ciao! 

Wenger's "failed" youth project

Three months and a decent revival later, Arsenal have now well and truly gone some way to establishing themselves at the right end of the league table. The nightmarish start to the current campaign, although not yet a distant dream, has now been replaced by a string of solid if not elegant performances. There is still no guarantee that we will finish in the top four this season, but then, it looks like we've given ourselves a bloody good chance. The added experience in the squad has no doubt played a huge part in the resurgence with the likes of Gervinho, Arteta, big Mert and Santos adding some steel and calm to a flamboyant and young team. There seems to be a notion doing the rounds though, that Wenger's investment in experience, has meant his youth project of many years has failed and that he has abandoned his youth policy. I'm not quite sure about that.