It has been torture watching this pillar of Indian cricket go through a phase when he couldn’t do anything right © Getty Images

After his successful Test debut following the car accident that cost him his right eye, Tiger Pataudi was asked when he thought he could make runs with only one eye. “When I saw the English bowling,” replied the player who was then not yet 21.

Whether Rahul Dravid thought he could make a century when he saw this English team and climb out of the hole he had been inhabiting in recent weeks is difficult to tell. After scores of 3 and 4 in the previous Test, he was probably among only a handful of people who thought that a century was round the corner.

Luckily that handful included his captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who made the pertinent point that Dravid would continue to bat at No. 3 in Mohali because shifting him to No. 5 would mean India had already lost three wickets. It also included the selection committee, four of whose members had played for India and were thus able to empathise with a player of proven ability struggling to find his touch.

His fans can heave a sigh of relief. It has been torture watching this pillar of Indian cricket go through a phase when he couldn’t do anything right. But it has been inspiring to watch him get out of the slump using the same methods that have got him over 10,000 runs in Tests. The temptation to change your game is strongest when things are not going right, but Dravid had to bat like Dravid and rediscover his touch. Anything else would have lacked authenticity.

All of India seems to have been praying for him - not just his parents who, if newspaper reports are to be believed, visited a shrine in Mangalore to offer prayers. Soon after he completed his century, I got a phone call from a friend taking credit for the turnaround. “I didn’t move from my seat from the first ball he played till the last. I wore the same clothes, did everything in the same order over the two days,” he said in all seriousness. This is one of fandom’s oldest superstitions. By the same token, I am sure there were those who missed his century because they didn’t watch the first day’s play and so couldn’t watch the second day in case they brought their hero bad luck.

It is not true that only the media were on Dravid’s case; those who were most vicious in their criticism will point out that few batsmen have been given as many chances to come good as Dravid has. But 800-plus runs in the calendar year is not the worst batting performance in international cricket. Dravid was being judged by the standards he has set himself, and by that reckoning he fell short. More to the point, with every failure, he seemed to withdraw deeper into himself, and go to areas that he ought not to have revisited. The dark areas where failures, shortcomings and bad days in the office make their opposites seem like mirages.

Following the debacle in Sri Lanka, the so-called Fabulous Four have now reasserted themselves. Ganguly, Laxman and Tendulkar had already shaken off the horrors of that tour ... Dravid has finally got there, but what a heart-wrenching trip it has been!

	He needs to dine at the high table with the captain, planning strategy and ensuring that India’s pre-eminent position as the home of spin is retained © Getty Images

During the Chennai Test, Harbhajan Singh went past Lance Gibbs’ aggregate to become the second most successful offspinner in the game behind Muttiah Muralitharan. For his 309 wickets, Gibbs played 79 Tests over 18 years; Harbhajan’s 310 have come in ten years and 73 Tests. He is only 28 and given different circumstances might have been pushing for the captaincy. That question does not arise now, with Mahendra Singh Dhoni, a younger man in charge and inspiring the team to famous victories.

But on the evidence of the Chennai Test, the question that needs to be asked is this: Is Harbhajan suffering from the No. 1 syndrome, the pressure of being the top spinner in the side? He is trying too hard, bowling too fast and too flat and on a track he should have thrived on, he finished with just four wickets in the match.

India’s victory and yet another failure by Rahul Dravid will ensure that the focus will be elsewhere, but India’s leading spinner needs to introspect. He needs to play the kind of mentoring role to the younger spinners that Anil Kumble did when Harbhajan himself was making his debut. He needs to dine at the high table with the captain, planning strategy and ensuring that India’s pre-eminent position as the home of spin is retained. But none of the big picture contribution will be forthcoming if the bowler lacks the confidence that comes from having wickets in the bag.

With Kumble, Harbhajan formed one of the most successful partnerships - in the 54 Tests they played together, they claimed 501 wickets and helped India to 21 victories. That is a terrific record.

Yet Harbhajan did not bowl in Chennai like a bowler with over 300 wickets in his bag. Traditionally English batsmen, unlike the Australians, have played offspin better than they have legspin. This, far from acting as a spur to the main spinner seems to have discouraged him, and the focus has been on keeping down the runs.

When the teams reassemble for the Mohali Test on Friday, they might decide to replace a spinner with a medium pacer if the track promises more for the seamer. Ironically, the respective spinners heading for the chopping block then might be the two leading men – India’s Harbhajan and England’s Monty Panesar. Both spinners seemed to forget in Chennai that they were in the team to take wickets, not just to keep down the runs.

Spin bowling is about taking chances, about challenging the batsman into making mistakes, drawing them forward to drive the ball that doesn’t get there or tricking them into misreading the spin. Harbhajan’s predictability does not augur well for the Indian team. He is an attacking bowler by temperament and technique. And he needs to rediscover the touch that has made him so successful so far. He is the country’s number one spinner - he must bowl like one.

	Can Rahul Dravid work his way out of a slump? © AFP

One of the saddest sights in sport is the ageing, once-great player struggling to come to terms with his game in full public glare. Struggling architects who have run out of ideas can repeat themselves or rely on their juniors, struggling politicians can hire a PR agency and bluff their way back into power. But struggling sportsmen have no such cushion: when the goals dry up or the runs stop coming there is no place to hide. The past is no guide to the future. The present is all. Sport is cruel.

And right now Rahul Dravid, one of the few players of his generation both loved and respected, finds himself facing the question that two of his contemporaries, Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble, thought had only one answer. Ganguly gave himself a tension-free Australia series by announcing at the start of it that it would be his last. Kumble’s end was hastened by injury.

Even his worst critics, however, hope that over the next two days, as India begin a fourth-innings chase, Dravid rediscovers his old form. He might still decide to quit, but at least that will be out of choice and not because of circumstances. In the recent past, he has been a piece of classical music played at the wrong speed. Even when he has looked good, every note in place, he has suddenly faltered, and even when he hasn’t faltered he has looked like going off key any moment.

At 35, Dravid cannot look outside his natural game for answers. He is not likely to change his game and hit himself out of trouble as he sees the light at the end of the tunnel begin to flicker ominously.

Dravid needs to find the solutions playing like Dravid, and time is running out. His catching is beginning to let him down too. It was strange to see him field on the leg-side boundary today.

He will be the first to admit that he has had the support of the selectors and his captain. The slide began in England a year ago, with whatever went wrong causing him to give up captaincy. The man who consistently averaged above 55 averages around 30 this year. The thoroughbred - to change our analogy - is turning into a cart-horse. It is not a pretty sight.

Does he have one final match-winning (or match-saving) innings in him? The romantics will hope he does. One good innings is all he needs, say friend and foe alike, but with every failure hope is beginning to recede.

Not for the first time, a visiting team written off before the start of the series is about to upset all calculations. Seldom can a fourth innings have been so important - for country and individual - as the one that is about to unfold before us.

	The players are putting on a show to help us regain our poise, we must respond by allowing them to find their own peace © AFP

Cricket often stands for something beyond itself. It has been the symbol of an empire and the symbol of the colonies striking back. Cricket matches are seldom bereft of symbolic content; the baggage of history ensures that. No India-Pakistan series, for example, can ever be about the cricket alone. The game takes the shape of the vessel it is poured into - the vessel made from the prevailing political and social thinking of the period. Today in India it stands for anti-terrorism. It is a heavy responsibility.

Few matches in recent years have had as much symbolic power as the one set to commence in Chennai. It will be seen, at the very least, as a match between England’s bulldog spirit and India’s resilience. Cliché, yes, but clichés become clichés because they happen to be true. And before we are through, other symbols are bound to be imposed on the game. Sport is convenient that way.

Chennai, a city which knows both its history and its cricket, is bound to give the English captain a roar of approval and gratitude when he goes out to toss. Merely by turning up England have won many hearts. Some even think they have won a victory already regardless of what happens in the two-match series.

Still, before the umpire shouts ‘Play’, we need to dust the game of its excessive symbolism and drag it back to its slot as a competitive sport between two countries.

So far the focus has been on the English team - their generosity, their sacrifice, their spirit - but the Indian team has had to deal with its demons too. Some of the players have lost people they knew in the terrorist attacks; like the rest of us, all of them will have experienced a sickening feeling in the pits of their stomachs while watching the events unfold on television.

They too will have problems concentrating on the job at hand. Sachin Tendulkar might have played 154 Test matches, but even he will have to make a mighty effort to push the events that paralysed his city and the country into the back of his mind and focus on doing what he does best. It is a tough call. The players are putting on a show to help us regain our poise, we must respond by allowing them to find their own peace on the cricket field.

Will the return of the England team herald normalcy or endorse it? Or is that question no longer relevant, for terrorists, like Macbeth, have murdered sleep and normalcy forever? Will normalcy follow cricket or should cricket follow normalcy?




England have another 5000 or so kilometres to travel before they land in Chennai and hopefully someone will get close enough to the team to recognise the players and confirm that they have indeed arrived. Security is bound to be a bigger bugbear than the traditional Indian welcome which comprises confusion and noise in equal measure, but the players are not likely to complain.

The Indian captain, we must remember, has an entourage of 22 policemen protecting him and an escort car every time he drives out of his home - so we can understand the scale of these things. According to newspaper reports, Mahendra Singh Dhoni is unhappy with this meagre protection, and expressed his unhappiness by ditching his security and riding to the airport on his own. Kevin Pietersen is unlikely to do likewise.

The reactions to England’s return have ranged from the cynical to the upbeat. On the sceptical side of the ledger are such reasons as money, bargaining chips at the IPL, ensuring that the Champions League is not affected, while on the positive side are support for a country which has suffered, a way to tell the terrorists off and belief that whatever happens, the show must go on.

Pessimists have been quick to point out that a cancellation might have split the cricket world along racial lines, a line of argument one has been hearing for sometime now, whether the sticking point is yet another Indian being hauled up for misbehaviour or an occasional protest about the way India is running world cricket.

Perhaps there is no single reason for England’s return. Even those who honestly believe they are going ahead with the series in order to cock a snook at terrorists cannot be unaware of the business advantages of such a stand. And those who hope this will mean the IPL will look kindly upon a short-term individual contract would be just as pleased to be lauded for seeing the larger picture.

Yet, whatever the reason or combination of reasons, India have reason to be grateful to the players for coming back. It is not yet official - that will happen when Reg Dickason gives the all-clear - but when they do, sacrificing quality time with the family at home for the uncertainty in a foreign country, the Indian board must acknowledge the enormity of the decision.

It will be the first step towards showing the world that neither the Commonwealth Games nor the World Cup in 2011 needs to be in danger of being taken away from India. Perhaps mixed with the relief will be somewhat warmer feelings towards a neighbour whose cricket has suffered because no one wants to go there.

If India understand the frustration of being an outcast and the joy that comes with acceptance, then they have a responsibility to tour Pakistan next month. Things might change between now and then, but in principle at least India must accept that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

	Sourav Ganguly: big on killer instinct, and backed players regardless of where they came from © AFP

It is possible that we are witnessing the erasure of some of the cliches associated with Indian cricket. The lack of a killer instinct - for so long a catch-all phrase used as excuse for defeats - is not heard any more. Both the Test series against Australia and the one-day series against England have shown that whatever instincts the Indian team might lack, killer instinct isn’t one of them.

But there is a wider, happier trend emerging. For years, what many considered a bane of Indian cricket was the “quota” system. Five selectors, one from each geographical region, each with his own compulsions, each with limited knowledge of players in the other zones, picked teams that paid a tribute to the quota system. Many players from weaker zones were accommodated in the national side merely to keep that section of the country happy. Often a better player from another zone was overlooked because there were already too many players from his zone in the team.

The cry to delink geography from cricket went unheeded. Appoint three selectors (regardless of their zones), said those unhappy with the system, and give them the job. But it never happened.

While watching the Bangalore match against England, someone pointed out that there was no home boy to cheer for - no Dravid, no Kumble, no Uthappa. But it went further. There was no player from the South in the Indian team. So why should this be a good sign, you ask?

It is a good sign because it means no player has been sacrificed for the quota. Globalisation in one sphere seems to have inspired true nationalism in another (although it would be more correct to call it professionalism). The best team, regardless of zonal affiliations - the dream of the objective cricket watcher has finally come to pass. India have played four matches against England without a single player from the south. S Badrinath was south’s last representative (and doubtless he will come into the side now) to have played. That was against Sri Lanka in Colombo.

What makes all this very significant, and cause for rejoicing is that the chairman of the selectors, Kris Srikkanth is from the south. The killer instinct and the quota instinct - the lack of one and the existence of the other - have been analysed threadbare. Now, gradually, Indian cricket seems to have ingested the one and eliminated the other.

Former captain Sourav Ganguly should take some of the credit for bringing about this twin revolution. He was big on killer instinct, and backed players regardless of where they came from. Success strengthened the captain’s hands - as Dhoni who reportedly had reservations about a recent selection or two - will discover with every passing success.

Then came the common-sense call - regularise or perish. Soon the ICC stepped in, and the rules were standardised. Now it didn’t matter if you were playing in England or Australia or India or Sri Lanka. The same rules applied. This was good for television, no one was confused (except those trying to figure out D/L, but that was seen early as an occupational hazard).

Then came the lights, and it was assumed the one-day game had overcome one of the natural handicaps of the game, its dependence on natural light. Test cricket would be played in varied conditions, the differences in the venues, clay content in the soil, latitude and so on being part of its charm; true champions triumphed whatever the conditions. The shorter game meanwhile moved towards greater homogeneity, and for a while there was some thought given to drop-in pitches which would take away yet another imponderable from the game.

It is natural to assume that it is the duty of those who rule the game a) to ensure that a full game is played as far as possible b) to give the paying public a full game c) to use whatever is available to ensure both of the above – eg: lights, retractable roof in case of rain.

And yet the third one-dayer in Kanpur, played to a full house, left a bad taste in the mouth because neither the game nor the paying spectator was taken into consideration. Time was wasted in the morning, and lights were not switched on in the afternoon to finish the game because the teams had not reached such an agreement.

When rules go against common sense, they ought to be ditched. The paying public is gradually moving out of the frame where cricket is concerned, and that is not good for the game. Boards no longer think the public is important, because their money comes from television rights and corporate deals. But this is the same public that buys the toothpastes and the cars and the shoes that advertisers try to sell through cricket. To forget that is dangerous.

India won (they probably would have anyway); it was a well-planned victory (captain Dhoni knew from the start that D/L would make the difference and played accordingly), but in the end it was unsatisfying because a full game was not played when it could have been. It is time to tweak the rules again. Lights, roofs, water absorbers, whatever it takes to have a full game must be pressed into service. As the popular message on a t-shirt has it: If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

	Some Indian players will go from playing a ODI to a Twenty20 tournament to Test cricket in about ten days © AFP

India might have started well in the England series, but soon it will be time to set this aside, change hats as it were, and wear the Twenty20 garb. Whether switching the mindset is as easy as changing clothes is something we will have to wait and see. Some players will go from playing a one-day international to a Twenty20 tournament to Test cricket in about ten days.

Between the one-day series against England and before the Test series, some of the Indian players and most of the spectators will change channels - for on December 3, a few hours after the end of the seventh one-dayer, the Champions League is set to commence.

The final of that tournament is scheduled for December 10 in Chennai; a few hours later, India take on England in the first Test at Ahmedabad. Already there is talk of postponing the start of the Test by a day to give everybody time to get to the venue. Some genius in the cricket board obviously didn’t realise that 11 follows 10, and the fixtures were drawn up thus.

The Indian board, currently negotiating (that’s the polite word) with their counterparts in the English board to change the dates of the start of the English season next year so Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen (among others, one presumes) will be free to take part in the IPL, has been paying lip service to Test cricket but has shown little interest in supporting it.

In India, the home of cricket, the rule seems to be: the fewer the overs, greater the crowd support for the game. Thus we have Twenty20 at the top of the pyramid, attracting upwards of 50,000 in the major centres, one-day cricket in the middle capable of attracting around 30,000 spectators but mainly outside the major centres, and Test cricket which, if Nagpur was anything to go by, attracts about ten people. The board’s reaction, as the governing body is curious: throw more energies into Twenty20, and prepare for Test cricket’s funeral.

And it is not just the board. India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni - whose cricketing skill is matched only by his PR skill - takes time out in the middle of an important series, between the first and second one-dayers to inaugurate a stadium in Bhandara in Maharashtra. Well, he (and two others) cannot say ‘No’ to civil aviation minister Praful Patel (the stadium is named after his father). Air India went out of its way to give the players goodies after the World Twenty20 victory, and this is payback time.

There is a touching innocence about a board busybody’s attempt to pass it all off as being in aid of charity. And never mind the dangers of physical injury as the crowd rushed onto the field to swarm the players, or the security risk involved.

And this is the same Dhoni who pulled out of a Test series in Sri Lanka because he was tired of too much cricket.

But who has the moral authority to crack the whip and tell the players that they cannot do certain things in the middle of a series? Imagine the board telling Dhoni he cannot play in Bhandara during a series. He will (or his agent will) merely turn around and ask the board how the governing body can hold an international tournament in the middle of a bilateral series.

Love does make the world go round. Love of money, that is.

	A natural timer, a natural striker, a naturally aggressive player, Yuvraj Singh is one of the leading one-day players in the world © AFP

I think it was Steve Waugh who called Michael Bevan the ‘Bradman of one-day cricket’. It is both flattering and limiting, suggesting, as it does, that whatever his gifts - and these were considerable, giving him a career average of 53.58 from 232 matches in the shorter game - there would always be an asterisk against Bevan’s name. And the footnote would read: “A great finisher of the one-day game (unbeaten 67 times), he failed to impress in his 18 Tests; he couldn’t manage a single century.”

There is a similar asterisk beginning to take shape over the name of Yuvraj Singh, but he is young enough to erase the mark before it is fully formed. He turns 27 next month, and has played 23 Tests. Yet it is his 218 one-day matches and 6000-plus runs that define him now. Can he throw a bridge across the two cultures?

Test players adapt to the one-day game, but the traffic in the reverse direction is thinner. A Rahul Dravid adapted so well that he has over ten thousand runs in both forms; in recent years Krishnamachari Srikkanth broke into the Test squad on the basis of his one-day prowess, and remained there. Men like Ajay Jadeja, Shahid Afridi, Jonty Rhodes stayed one-dimensional (purely cricket-wise, of course).

When you see Yuvraj bring his bat down in an arc, check himself and merely jab at the ball to send it sailing over long off, and that too against Andrew Flintoff, you may be forgiven for asking the obvious question: why is this man not a regular in all forms of the game? A natural timer, a natural striker, a naturally aggressive player, he is one of the leading one-day players in the world. Of that there is no doubt. So what prevents such a natural talent from carving out a permanent place in the Test side?

Yuvraj looked overweight in Rajkot, but he made batting look ridiculously easy too. Have the planets begun to fall into the right alignment at last? He is in form, there is a vacancy following the retirement of Sourav Ganguly, and the series is at home where his last two scores have been 32 and 169.

Yuvraj served notice before he was 19 with a stunning one-day innings in Nairobi against Australia. That was eight years ago, and when he was dropped from the Irani squad this year it seemed he was in the curious position of being neither senior enough to be protected, nor young enough to be given another chance.

So what went wrong? Those who will reduce everything to technique will point to his weaknesses against the moving as well as the turning ball - it is a double whammy. Others will put it down to his temperament, his lifestyle.

That he is talented, there is no doubt. But sometimes talent rewarded early can be a curse. It leaves the talented without the equipment to handle failure; sometimes future success is taken for granted. Seldom is success an accident and the precocious talent often discovers this too late. There is even a school which holds that talent is over-rated, and success comes to those whose commitment outweighs mere talent. Perhaps technique is over-rated too. A big heart often trumps quick feet or the straight backlift.

In Tests, teams know how to bowl at Yuvraj and play on his self-esteem. He can swing his bat with rare extravagance in one-day cricket; in the longer game, he will need to understand the virtues of patience. And of swallowing the ego. The Rajkot innings can be a stepping stone; it could be a millstone too if Yuvraj feels forced to repeat it every time he goes out to bat.

	I can see Rahul Dravid asking himself over and over if bowlers have managed to find a technical flaw in his game © AFP

I thought chairman of selectors Kris Srikkanth dropped a hint when he said Rahul Dravid was “just one innings away from regaining his form.” Then he was quoted in another newspaper as saying, “I am sure Dravid will play some extraordinary innings against England.” If I were Dravid, I would sleep peacefully knowing I had the chairman’s backing.

But I am not Dravid, and I doubt if he has been sleeping peacefully of late. The very qualities that make Dravid the great player he is - the intensity, the obsession with getting things right, the habit of introspection - take him down a slippery slope when things are not going well. In my mind’s eye, I can see Dravid asking himself over and over if bowlers have managed to find a technical flaw in his game. Is his elbow high enough in defence? Are his feet moving correctly? Should he play at fewer deliveries, should he play at more?

Dravid would worry about these things even if he were playing a casual game in his backyard with his son Samit. That is the kind of person he is. There has to be an intellectual solution to the problem - he cannot, like, Sourav Ganguly trust his eye and his natural game to see him through. Ganguly came out of a bad phase by becoming more Ganguly-like, putting his faith in his strengths on the off side. Dravid has made so many tiny changes to his game over the years, working each out beforehand in his mind, that there is no single Dravid-like batsmanship.

It is an existential dilemma: which Dravid should he choose to throw all his energies into at this stage? The debutant who was considered not good enough for the one-day game? The fluent striker who tended to hit straight to the fielder in his early series? The batsman who clinically took Allan Donald apart in South Africa? The player who finished with the most runs in a World Cup? Around the turn of the century, Dravid achieved the great synthesis, becoming an all-round batsman indispensable in either form of the game. Now he is no longer required for the shorter version. And there haven’t been enough runs in Tests to make him an automatic choice.

Dravid has two Ranji Trophy games before the first Test on December 11. Karnataka play Andhra on November 16 and Baroda a week later. Dravid’s confidence right now is so low that he has virtually cut out shots square of the wicket. When you see him square-cut the fast bowler to the boundary you will know that he has come to terms with the devils in his mind.

In Bangalore and in Mohali he batted long enough for his 51 and 39 to indicate the problem was not in his feet but in his head. Sunil Gavaskar once went through a series in Australia getting caught behind in identical fashion. It has happened to Greg Chappell, and if you go back, even the great Wally Hammond has struggled. But these have usually lasted one series. Dravid’s struggle has gone on for a couple of seasons now, and he has been treated with kid gloves in that period.

This is partly because either the rest of the batting has been in the same boat (as in Sri Lanka) or it has been doing exceptionally well (as in the recent series against Australia). The pressure on Dravid therefore has been mainly from himself. Ganguly, who made his Test debut alongside him in 1996, has retired in style. Karnataka mate Anil Kumble was carried off the field in his last Test. Dravid would like to go out in triumph, but self-doubt is a cancer that can eat through a sportsman’s mind.

Should he bargain with the selectors and promise to leave at the end of the England series in return for a guaranteed place in the team to sort himself out? That would be un-Dravidlike. And there are two important away series to follow. In Pakistan (or the UAE, if that falls through, for security reasons) and then in New Zealand. No Indian has a better record outside the country. Dravid is most at home away from home.