The diagnosis is out: the country has suffering from an incurable attack of World Cup fever. One member of the Indian cricket team that fans will look towards for some succour, for a cure, is vice-captain Rahul Dravid. He spoke to Karan Thapar for BBC World’s ‘Face to Face’ show. Exclusive excerpts: • You’ve just come back from a depressing tour of New Zealand. What went wrong?We were disappointed. We went there believing we had very good chances. Obviously, we didn’t adapt to the weather conditions as we should have. I guess it was the right tour at the end of a long year. We’ll have to admit that we probably didn’t play it as well as we should have. • Was it the quality of the pitches, was it the swinging seam bowling?Obviously the ball did swing at the seam a lot. And because they’d had a wet summer, the wickets were damp and didn’t allow a lot of our batsmen to express ourselves. They fought hard enough to get the extra 20 runs that we needed. Even though we lost the series 2-0 and the one days 5-2, we lost the crucial tosses in the last matches, and tosses make quite a difference in test matches. • So it was a bit of bad luck too?A little bit. But in the end you make your own luck and we should have fought hard enough to get the 30-40 extra runs. It’s not about winning big or about winning pretty, it’s about finding the grit and determination to make those 30-40 extra runs. • Yet in India there were a lot of adverse comments about what they called the undisciplined batting.Obviously you know you’re going to get criticised, and fair enough, when you go out and you’re an international batsman, a professional, you’re expected to dwell in all conditions and in the end to get criticism after a tour like that is accepted. • It doesn’t upset you?Not really because I expect to be judged and evaluated on my performances and they weren’t up to my standards. I’m not really worried about what people write about me, I set my own standards and set my own goals. I didn’t probably achieve them. • The wickets are repeatedly one of the reasons why the team and you in particular didn’t do well. Would you all say that the wickets were bolstered deliberately to the Indian team’s disadvantage?I would like to think not. • If you had a sneaking suspicion that.Obviously they would have liked to take our spinners off the game. The fact that teams play to their advantages at home is nothing new. This has gone on for years and it doesn’t happen only in India. • What about the sixth one-day? We had an amazing result of 183/2 and the team suddenly collapsing to a 198 was disappointing. We thought we should have wrapped that game up. Just that we felt mentally relaxed sitting in the dressing room. • You mean you’d become too confident way to soon?Ya. You know that when you need 20 runs with 10 wickets in hand and nine overs to go, there can be a tendency for the guy who’s coming in next to relax and say that it’s all over. That can happen and probably shouldn’t and that’s a good lesson for us, leading up to the World Cup. • You’ve faced the World Cup, you’re going to South Africa, what will be the impact on the morale of the team after the New Zealand experience?People think it’s very depressing and very disheartening but I guess as a team, from our point of view, it’ll be a good test to see if we can lift the Cup. • Do you think you can?We definitely can. We’ve shown over the last one-and-a-half years some very good results. We’ve been competitive in India and abroad. We’ve won some very good tournaments. We’ve got a good work ethic going, we’ve got a good team spirit going and we’ve got some good guys around. We can turn this around. • But you have a real test of character and attitude, not just of how you play, but the attitude with which you play.I don’t think the attitude was too wrong. We guys worked very hard and everyone’s quite keen and the enthusiasm’s there and the attitude’s good. We need to ensure that we maintain that till the World Cup. • Does it worry you that so many of your opponents would have seen what they considered to be your weaknesses in New Zealand and would seek to exploit that in South Africa?It might work to our favour. Some of them might get complacent. Some might think that we’ve got the world on India and India doesn’t look its form to be a winner, and that’s not a bad position to go into. • Stick your neck out, let me ask you one how do you think the team is going to fare at this World Cup?I’d like to think we’d do well. I don’t play with words and I don’t place bets but al I can say is that I think we’ll go out and play tough cricket. • Into the semis.I hope so. I don’t go into tournaments believing we can’t do anything and I’d like to go into this tournament believing that if we play good cricket, consistent cricket. • All the way to the finals and win it?Definitely. • Except that your win ratio in South Africa isn’t that reassuring. Compared to Pakistan’s 41% to win and Australia’s astonishing 56% to win, India in South Africa has a win rate of barely 27.27.Ya, but that’s the past. I’m not going to fear that we will do it or we won’t do it, what I’m going to say is that if we play good cricket and if we play up to our potential. • What about your own performance in the forthcoming World Cup? You ended the last World Cup as a high-scoring batsman. Is it important for you to repeat that feat again?Not as important as to win it, really. • You wouldn’t care if you weren’t the high scorer this time round?Definitely not. I didn’t go out in the last tournament trying to become the high scorer. I went out there trying to win it. • So there’s no personal pressure on you that you have to perform at the same level as last time?There’s pressure to perform because I know I’d like to contribute to us winning and doing well. I’m not even going to think about trying to do what I did last time. I’m just going to try and do well and play with a bit of responsibility and see if I can get the guys across. • They used to call you ‘The Wall’ but now they call you ‘Mr Dependable’. Is that an indication how much your batting has improved?I don’t know. I’ve never been one for these names people call you. • Except the interesting thing is that if you look at your performance in tests in 2002, and exclude the two tests that you played in New Zealand, in the remaining 14, you scored five centuries and you have an average of 64.52. Would that make it your best year?It would definitely, statistically and even the way I played, I thought it was my best year in terms of the way I batted right through. I felt like I was probably at the top of my game and I felt that confidence going right through. • What do you attribute this to?Obviously the increase in physical fitness over the year, getting some good help from people like Adrian and Andrew, playing in a good team environment. • Let’s look at some of the highlights of last year. There were the Georgetown innings when you scored a 144-not out. How badly shaken were you when you got hit in the head by a Marwin delivery?I was more surprised that anything else. • How did you react?It just made me more determined. The situation helped because I needed to carry on because we needed to save the follow on to save the test match. I had to go on batting. I had to stay there and fight. • Challenges bring out the best in you?They do. I love a challenge and the great thing I love about cricket apart from everything else is the contest that it is, a huge contest between yourself, your thoughts, fears. You are competing with yourself and I love that. I love the buzz of competition. It’s something I thrive for. I love the game but I love the competition more. • You once said that ‘People overrate style. I would rather be thorough, consistent and methodical than brilliant and inconsistent.’ Is that your reply to people who used to earlier say, Rahul, the boring batsman?I’d like to be boring and successful. Obviously, it’s great to have flair and be successful. Look at the Laras and the Tendulkars and they probably have a combination of both. The bottom line is that you have to be consistent and you have to be successful. People rate flair and style too much. When you build a team, you’ve got to look for people who are consistent, who work hard and who’ll do the job for you. On top of that, if they do have flair and style they’re fantastic. If it’s a trade off between the two, I would definitely go for consistency. • You are also the wicketkeeper. Is that an additional responsibility that you’re happy to accept or have you done it because the team needed you to?Initially I didn’t believe I could do it. I hadn’t done it for 10 years, except on and off for India. • Did the challenge attract you?It did. I knew it would be an extra challenge and lots of people said I wouldn’t be able to do it. So I thought I must try and do it. • Just to prove them wrong?Not only that but initially, I didn’t believe that it was the right way to go. I still believe that in the long run, India does need a specific wicketkeeper-batsman. We need to find someone like Gilchrist or Andy Clark. We don’t have that at the moment unfortunately. Parthiv looked very promising and he could be the man in a few years’ time. In the long run, India needs a regular wicketkeeper-batsman. There’s no way that in international cricket today, in one-day cricket, that you can be successful without your wicketkeeper being in the top six. I was asked to do a job and the way the results have gone over the last year, I may probably have become a bit of a believer. So till the World Cup, I’ll have a go at it. • The audience will be disappointed if I don’t put to you the fact that you are 30, you are successful, you are rich, do you feel with all these things that you need a wife?I haven’t given it a thought. I guess I will settle down but the time will come and you know I think a few more things occupying my mind at the minute.
