World Cup B D Narayankar
It is not Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag or Mahendra Singh Dhoni as vital as Rahul Dravid is to the Indian cricket team. He is one player who believes in building an innings and his performance would be vital for Team India’s success in the World Cup.
It always have been the batsmen who had built their innings had made a tremendous difference in their sides. The shorter version of the game is not all about going bang-bang. It also requires players like Sunil Gavaskar, Javed Miandad, Graham Thorpe, Yusuf Khan and Arajuna Ranatunga to make it exciting in their own inimitable style.
One should not take the credit away from Mushfiqur Rahim who scored an unbeaten 59 of 107 balls that brought victory to Bangladesh against India in Port-of-Spain on March 17. He held the Bangladesh’s innings together till the end.
Such players are required in a team and we have Dravid. It could be a folly to draw comparisons between Dravid and Gavaskar, but certainly he is greater than Sachin because of a simple reason that when he carries his innings it means he is carrying his team’s fortunes too.
One can be jittery about Sachin when he is batting, but not with Dravid. Every time he goes out to bat there is an inimitable feeling in millions of Indians that ‘Mr Dependable’ will deliver. And how many times he has done it for India before. Even his paltry 30-odd runs would mean so much to India as he would have made it without building partnerships with his colleagues.
If Dravid fails, most of the times India doesn’t do well, and that exactly happened when India lost to Bangladesh. He is the key player.
We sincerely hope Dravid delivers and shuts some of the irresponsible media who are carrying negative stories interviewing fans, most of whom do not know the changing factors of the seven-hour extravaganza.
Among everyone, I blame the media first for creating so much pressure around a team, that took the life of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer in Jamaica after his team was knocked out of the World Cup.
For God sake stop this non-sense. My only advise, especially to electronic media is that they should hire sportsmen as sports editor and leave it to them to bring professionalism in covering sports events. I think ESPN-Star Sports is the only channel which has that pool of resources which believes in professionalism.
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