Often quoted as the Great Wall of India, Rahul Dravid just cannot get himself out of what cannot be referred to as a dry patch or being out-of-form but a strange phase wherein he just cannot occupy the crease long enough to justify such adjectives. It seems that the great batsman is either losing his reflexes or just playing a few test matches in a year simply means that he isn't getting enough international cricket to make him flourish at the crease in the manner that saw him conquer the best of South African and Australian bowling attacks. He is getting out to rather soft deliveries, none of them looking threatening enough for someone of Dravid's stature. Further, what is worrying is that his body seems to be moving a bit too much when playing the on-drives. A small but exaggerated shuffle towards the off-side seems to be the undoing in this case. Just imagine a team that is on the verge of losing Dravid and Laxman in the very near future.....any worthy new stars in the Indian batting line-up to vouch for such profiles??
Murali's Greatness: a never-ending cricketing controversy
Muralitharan has announced that the first test match between Sri Lanka and India would be his last test match as he wants to preserve himself for the forthcoming world cup that is scheduled to be hosted in the sub-continent. The decision is just a bit surprising considering that he is on the verge of breaking the 800 test wicket barrier; his currently tally being a tantalizing close affair at 792 scalps. Further, the tongues are already wagging about the legacy of the Lankan spin maestro. The only thing that I would like to highlight is that his achievements should not be looked down upon by Warne's die-hard supporters simply because both of them were able to extract a lot of their victims from conditions that were heavily loaded in their favor. While Murali playing on slow pitches at home
was very obvious, many people don't seem to notice that Warne got a lot of his wickets by playing endless series of tests against West Indies and England sides that are among the two, poorest players of spin bowling in the last decade of cricket. If Murali got pitches to his liking, Warne got opponents who were notoriously bad players of quality spin....I would recommend some introspection before making judgmental decisions about Murali's "achievements" (the double-quote pun non intended).
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