Different means, same end

Virender Sehwag is the racy thriller, Rahul Dravid the sweeping epic, Sehwag strings together some great skits, Dravid writes a thesis, Sehwag is instinctive, Dravid erudite. Sehwag will yodel like Kishore Kumar, Dravid sing Jagjit Singh8217;s ghazal. Both have their place and neither can be belittled. They make for a great buffet.

There is no doubt that ten thousand runs put you in an elite club. It means you have countered different conditions, conquered fitness issues, won over fatigue, travel, changes in your own personality and the little matter of opposition bowlers trying to knock your head off, as you pass through different stages in a career. There is a point of view, debatable, that if you play 120 Tests, ten thousand runs would be inevitable. It belittles the achievement. Not everyone is good enough to be selected 120 times by his country and average 55 over that period. It8217;s time to bury theories and stand up and applaud Rahul Dravid as one of the all-time greats, someone who has played with utmost dignity and has rarely given less than what he was capable of for his side. It is a combination that comes rarely.

Cricket hardly ever throws up a complete product like Dravid. To that extent, he is the only successor we have had to the great Sunil Gavaskar. And like with all cricketers, Dravid8217;s success is more temperament than talent or technique. Both are over-rated qualities. Like Glenn McGrath, Dravid might well say, 8220;I knew my body and I knew my game8221;. Dravid8217;s game is built around simplicity and very often there is great beauty in simplicity.

Perhaps the best comment on Dravid8217;s great accomplishment came from another fine son of Bangalore, Gundappa Vishwanath who said Dravid was the better player of the two. It is a correct assessment but it is in making it that Vishwanath8217;s greatness lies. As a batsman, he was classy and honest and it is fantastic to see that those qualities have not deserted him in retirement when bitterness befriends people. I asked Dravid once how it felt to be better than the man he idolised. It is one of the most amazing moments in a person8217;s career and one that presents itself to very few. In that wonderfully respectful manner, he sidestepped it but he was aware of it.

I hope he scripts many more of these stylish, critical innings. There is much to learn from Dravid the person and the cricketer because while 20-20 may be upon us, and might require different skills, the toughness of character that has been Dravid8217;s hallmark will never go out of fashion. He once told me that the ultimate reward for a sportsman is to be respected in both dressing rooms; your own and that of your opponents. If he doesn8217;t score another run, he will have that for life.

Virender Sehwag is very unlike Dravid; indeed he is very unlike anybody at all and we must celebrate that. Where a Dravid would, in classical tradition, wear a bowler down and force him to bowl to the batsman8217;s strengths, Sehwag sees an opportunity in every ball; an opportunity to land a punch on the opponent. It is not a misplaced metaphor for there is a lot of the boxer in Sehwag. His approach is direct, seemingly brutal, but has its origins in extraordinary self-belief. He had to have it for had he questioned his style, he would have ended up being someone else.

It requires a brave man to back himself with the kind of game Sehwag has when things go wrong.

8220;I play the ball, not the bowler8221; he once said and that is important because reputations have always mattered little to him. It is a great philosophy but it is only a rare cricketer who can forget the previous ball and approach the next one like it is the first. His success lies not as much in finding shots to play off a ball but in doing so over a fairly long innings. And you can only do that if your game is built on an inherently uncomplicated approach. It is not difficult to see why two successive test captains, each so completely different from him, fought to have him in the side even when things were not going his way.

Let8217;s celebrate Dravid and Sehwag, let8217;s celebrate the diversity for that is what makes sport so compelling.