Rahul 'The WALL' Dravid's flame still burns : Harsha Bhogle

Rahul Dravid's passion for and approach to cricket haven't changed in the last decade and a half. He is still intense, patient, and willing to work hard to prepare for each game

Harsha Bhogle

June 24, 2011

	Rahul Dravid has always relished, and thrived on, being challenged on the cricket field © Associated Press
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It is already 15 years since a simple, elegant, studious and very likeable young man walked out to bat for India at Lord's. That was an appropriate setting. Rahul Dravid is neatly turned out, plays the game correctly, likes the traditions associated with the game and is respectful of them. It is not difficult to see why the English would like him. In 1996, though, he was significantly more humble and courteous than those I seemed to run into at the ground.

Not much has changed since then. He is still as intense as ever, still unlikely to sport the ponytail he rejected in one of his earliest commercials, still deeply enamoured by the idea of playing for India, still very out of place in the Kingfisher jingle. That intensity is worth studying, though, for Dravid knows no other way of playing the game. Like a good student would, he assimilates data, works out what he is going to do, and focuses as intently as anyone who has played the game. Patience has been a childhood friend, and it has allowed him to retain the intensity. Impatience is the hallmark of youth, and while Dravid has been young in years, he has always sported a maturity that belies them.

There have been times when some of us feared that intensity; when we wondered if the fire within would singe him, and whether he just needed to get his mind off the game and relax a bit. We feared every ball would become a battle to be fought, a storm to be withstood. But as he often told me in those days, it was the same method that had brought him so many runs. It was the person he was; the challenge he relished that defined the way he played the game. He knew, as he repeatedly said, that he wasn't a Sehwag, that he had to bat longer to score the same number of runs; that therefore, he needed to focus strongly and prepare well for a game. It was a debate he was willing to get into but it was a solution he had to find himself. As it turns out, the way he knew best has so far brought him 12,215 runs in Test cricket, and that number tends to seal most debates.

We need to let that number roll off our tongues a bit more often because it is a colossal figure. It is not a number you dream of achieving, because it is too distant. It is a product of extraordinary ability and dedication. In 1994 his father would call to request, for class runs in the family, if he could get a video of his son playing in domestic cricket. Dravid's father can be very proud of the way his son has graced the game and scored runs.

There are other reasons too; reasons apart from the tenacity, the fire, the cover drive and the catches at slip. In the 16 years that I have had the pleasure of knowing him, I have rarely encountered ego or anger. Maybe the dressing room, a place I stay away from, has seen the odd outburst, but ego and anger are like cholesterol and sugar in the blood; eventually they will get you.

In a way it is good that Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar have had an extended run, for there must be a gradual handing over of the baton. Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara, Suresh Raina or Rohit Sharma must know what it takes to seek greatness, and maybe then achieve it. They will have to fight their own battles but a live example would help. That is why I am particularly delighted that Dravid plays in the Ranji Trophy whenever he can. He has often spoken of hanging on to every word that people like Gundappa Viswanath spoke to youngsters in Karnataka. And now that the time has come to carry forward that tradition, he is doing his bit. Cricket could do with more Johnny Appleseeds.

I don't know how much longer he will play for India, for by the time he plays at Lord's next, he will be closer to 39 than 38. But what I do know is that whenever an all-time Indian XI gets picked, Nos. 1, 3 and 4 will be written simultaneously.

Harsha Bhogle is a commentator, television presenter and writer. His Twitter feed is here

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Mathematically speaking, real talent = ability x hard work + consistency : Harsha Bhogle

My father, as was the norm with respectable middle class families in the years gone by, believed it was important that his children were good at mathematics. If your child was good at mathematics, you had imparted the right education and fulfilled one of your primary duties as a parent.

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And he often quoted to us what his friend, a respected professor of mathematics, used to say, “There should be no problem that you encounter in an examination for the first time.” It meant you had to work so hard that you had, conceivably, attempted and vanquished every situation that could find its way into an exam paper. It begs the question: if you did achieve 150 out of 150 in an exam (which my wife very very nearly did, much to my constant awe), was it because you were extraordinarily intuitive or was it because you had worked harder than the others so that you didn’t “encounter any problem in an exam” for the first time? 

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In other words, is getting a “centum” (a peculiarly TamBram expression and a badge of honour) a matter of genius or a matter of perseverance? It is an issue that many intelligent authors around the world have been debating over for a while and one that is at the heart of sport. Would anybody who solved a certain number of sums get full marks? Would two people, each of whom put in ten thousand hours (Malcolm Gladwell’s threshold for achievement) produce identical results? Or are some people innately gifted allowing them to cross that threshold in fewer hours? 

We pose that question a great deal in cricket when we argue about talent? Players who play certain shots, the perfectly balanced on-drive for example, are labelled “talented” and put into a separate category. They acquire a halo, in a near-equal situation they tend to get picked first. “Talent” becomes this key that they flash to gain entry. And yet it is worth asking what talent really is? Is it the ability to play the on-drive or, more critically, the ability to play that on-drive consistently? It is a critical difference. Consistency brings in an element of perseverance that you do not normally bracket with talent. 

Let me explain. I have often, while watching Rohit Sharma bat, said “wow” loudly to myself. I probably said so because I saw him play a shot I did not expect him to. Or maybe it was a shot that very few players were able to play. Just as often I find myself saying “ugh” with Rohit out of frustration. It is probably because, having had the opportunity to go “wow” I now expected him to play the same shot again. And so, without explicitly stating it, I am invoking the assumption of consistency to assess talent. The old professor of mathematics would have said “play the shot so often that it is no longer a new shot when you play it”. 

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It is while I was debating this in my mind that I became aware of why Sachin Tendulkar paid such high compliments to Gary Kirsten for throwing him balls. Tendulkar wanted to perfect a shot and so he needed someone to throw him enough balls to attain that perfection so that when he attempted it in a match, he wasn’t doing it for the first time. And in a recent conversation he said he was at his best when he was in the “sub-conscious”, not distracted by the “conscious” and able to play by instinct something he had perfected through practice. 

Now, we often call Tendulkar a genius and yet, as we see, the talent that we believe comes dazzling through is, in essence, the product of many hours of perseverance. Is Tendulkar then, the supreme example of my father’s friend’s theory of doing well at mathematics? And assuming for a moment that is true, shouldn’t we be honouring perseverance because that is what it seems “talent” really is! 

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And so it follows that when we complain that talented players don’t get to where they should we are in effect saying that they didn’t practice hard enough to be consistent. Maybe it means we should all use the word “talent” more sparingly; not until ability has been married to hard work long enough to achieve consistency. 

This is also the starting premise of a new book I hope to continue reading (“Bounce” by the former table tennis champion Mathew Syed). I am delighted by its opening pages, one of which said “talent is over-rated”. It is something I have long believed! 

P.S.: I would be delighted if this opens up a debate on talent versus perseverance. Contrary points of view are welcome!

I don't Want to be Sachin - Harsha Bhogle after Ind-SA WC2011 Match

Remember when you failed an examination. How many people recall that, your class, friends, relatives? You failed to make it to the IITs or IIMs. Who remembers. How many times have you had the feeling of being the best in your class, school , university, state….., you failed to get a visa stamped this quarter…, you missed a promotion this year…, how did it feel when you dad told you in your early twenties that you are good for nothing…..and now your boss tell you the same...



You keep introspecting and go into a shell when people most of whom don’t matter a dime in your life criticize you, back bite you, make fun of you. You are left sad and shattered and you cry when your own kin scoffs at you. You say I am feeling low today. It takes a lot from us to come out of these everyday situations and move on. A lot??? really?



Now here’s a man standing on the third man boundary in the last over of a world cup match. The bowler just has to bowl sensibly to win this game. What the man at the boundary sees is 4 rank bad bowls bowled without any sense of focus, planning or regret. India loses, yet again in those circumstances when he has done just about everything right.

He does not cry. Does not show any emotion. Just keeps his head down and leaves the field. He has seen these failures for 22 years now. And not just his class, relatives, friends but the whole world has seen these failures. We are too immature to even imagine what goes on in that mind and heart of his. That’s why I would never want to be Sachin.



True, he has single handedly lifted to moods of this entire nation umpteen number of times. He has been an inspiration to rise above our mediocrity. Nobody who has ever lifted the willow even comes close to this man’s genius. His dedication and metal strength is unparallel. This is specially for those people who would have made fun of him again last night when India lost. They are people who are mediocre in their own lives. Who just scoff at others to create cheap fun. Who have lived in a small hole throughout their lives and thought they have seen the oceans.



Think about the man himself. He is 37 years of age. He has been playing almost non stop for 22 years. The way he was running and diving around the field last night would have put 22 year olds to shame. The way he played the best opening quickies in the world was breathtaking. He just keeps getting better which is by the way humanly impossible. Its not for nothing that people call him GOD.

But still I don’t want to be in those shoes. We struggle in keeping our monotonous lives straight, lives which affect a limited number of people. Imagine what would be the magnitude of the inner struggle for him, pain both mental and physical, tears that have frozen with time, knees and ankles and every other joint in the body that is either bandaged or needs to be attended to every night, eyes that don’t sleep before a big game, bats that have scored 99 international tons and still see expectations from a billion people.



And he just converts those expectations into reality. We watch in awe, feel privileged.

Well I think its time that his team realizes that enough is enough. They have an obligation, not towards their country alone but towards sachin. They need to win this one for him. Stay assured that he himself will still deliver and leave no stone unturned to make sure India wins this cup.

This is not just a game, and he is not just a sportsman. Its much more than this. Words fail here.....





--- HARSHA BHOGLE