It’s an epic image that in many ways changed the world of cricket. The sight of Rahul Dravid and his despondent Indian team on the player’s balcony at the Queens Park Oval in Port-of-Spain in March 2007. They’d just been knocked out in the first round of the 50-over men’s World Cup. A moment that though laced with infamy for Indian cricket, was to completely dominate the landscape of world cricket for the next decade and a half. Starting with the way future international cricket schedules would get designed.
Not to forget the impact it had on the immediate future of Indian cricket back then. The big punt on naming MS Dhoni as the T20 captain, India winning the inaugural World T20 and the birth of the IPL.
All traced back to that one moment of embarrassment for Indian cricket, where they failed to get out of the first round in a major world event. There are two versions of the picture that generally do the rounds when someone brings up that forgettable World Cup campaign for the Indian team.
There’s one rather tragic one of Dravid as captain sitting with his left hand over his left eye, as if he couldn’t get himself to even look at what had transpired on that fateful evening in Port of Spain. And then there’s that more famous one with a bunch of the Indians sitting together, each displaying a different expression but the same emotion of despair, with Dravid front and centre, bitting his fingernails with the rest of his fingers resting on his left cheek.
While what took place thereafter in terms of the impact it had on all future World Cups has been well-publicised, what with India and Pakistan now guaranteed to face each other in the group stages regardless of what format it is – the man in that picture, Dravid, has not always got his due attention with regards to what that result must have meant to him. That was the last time he captained India in a World Cup match or in any match on Caribbean soil.
Here he is 17 years later, on what will be his final day as India coach, and with a chance for some highly-deserved redemption. Even if he’s vehemently against making this World Cup about himself. Despite the social media campaigns and the many Indian fans of a certain vintage being keen on using Dravid’s departure as a motivational tool for their team.
“It’s totally against who I am as a person and it’s totally against my values. You know, I don’t really believe in this ‘Do it for somebody’. I love that quote about somebody asking somebody else, ‘Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?’ and he says ‘I want to climb Mount Everest because it’s there. Why do we want to win this World Cup? because it’s there,” is what Dravid was quoted as saying on Star Sports.
“It’s not for anyone, it’s not for anybody, it’s just there to win. I just want to play good cricket and yeah, doing it for someone is totally against who I am as a person and what I believe in so I don’t want to talk about it and discuss it. If you can get that campaign removed, I will appreciate it,” he added.
Dravid was the captain of the Indian side that made a first-round exit in the 50-over World Cup in 2007 ©Getty
Even if he couldn’t have sounded more authentically Rahul Dravid than his summation of why he wants the focus away from him on Saturday (June 29) morning at the Kensington Oval in Barbados, he did what he’s made a habit out as coach, making a reconnaissance visit to Kensington Oval with a couple of his fellow members of the coaching staff for a quick look at the surface.
There is a similar vein to Dravid the coach and Dravid the captain. As captain, he buttressed the period between the more high-profile eras of Sourav Ganguly and MS Dhoni and did a reasonable job too. Having taken over from a largely-successful run for Ravi Shastri as coach, Dravid has had his moments at the helm but this could be the best yet. And why not.
The impact he’s had on some of these players at a personal level is quite something after all. Whether it’s with the likes of Rishabh Pant and Arshdeep Singh at the under-19 level, Hardik Pandya at the India A level or even the two big-wigs, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.
Dravid was Rohit’s first captain in international cricket. He was also Virat Kohli’s first IPL captain at Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). Apart from being the man who greeted Kohli in the middle for his very first Test innings, also in the Caribbean, at the Sabina Park in Kingston.
And he could be the first Indian head coach ever to win a World Cup (there were none in 1983 and Gary Kirten was in-charge in 2011), and that too in a part of the world which he would have very mixed memories of. It’ll also ensure that we have a new era-defining image from being in the Caribbean for a men’s World Cup.
