In a recent column Graham Gooch has said Dravid ”always hams…is almost always politically correct and nearly always boring”. In the same column, and may be in the same breath, he says his (Gooch) motivation was “simply to turn out in his country’s colours”. Check this. http://in.rediff.com/cricket/2006/apr/10gooch.htmRecently somebody talked Sehwag into commenting something about the Ganguly episode by asking a specific question “whether it would be pertinent to forget the Ganguly episode”, he said “of course, we have forgotten that…”, fair enough. But the media then created their own versions and picked only those words from his comments that suited their spins. Here are a few of them:“Sehwag says Ganguly a forgotten episode” http://ia.rediff.com/cricket/2006/apr/11sehwag.htm?q=tp&file=.htm
“Ganguly a forgotten chapter” http://www.hindustantimes.com/htcricket/7947_1672305,001601190003.htm
“Ganguly era behind us, says India’s Sehwag” http://uk.sports.yahoo.com/11042006/3/ganguly-era-behind-says-india-s-sehwag.html”
“Team India has forgotten Ganguly: Sehwag” http://cricket.expressindia.com/fulleistory.php?content_id=65896
This became like a misplayed stroke, going everywhere except where intendend, and the next day Sehwag had to call Ganguly and clarify. Ganguly’s reaction to all this was more princely, just saying it was a “a case of misinterpretation”.
So after beating Sri Lanka 6-1, drawing with RSA 2-2, beating Pakistan 4-1, it’s 5-1 thrashing of England this season since Dravid-Chappell took over. This is surely a change from the earlier years when invariably most ODI series that India played in used to get decided in the last match. The WI tour and the RSA tour later in the year will really confirm whether what they are doing on home pitches they can do in unfamiliar conditions. But for now, this home success is still better than the performances of last couple of years.
Ashok Malik and Dileep Premachandran have opened up a big debate on their blog about whether it’s a decline for India in test matches. (http://blogs.cricinfo.com/wicket_to_wicket/archives/2006/04/decline_what_de.php#more).
I don’t think it’s a decline because we don’t have enough data yet. We haven’t played that many matches yet after RD-GC took over and none of them have been outside the subcontinent. But I don’t see how can dismiss the progress between 2000-04 just because we didn’t achieve what may be Australia would have done. This particular piece seems to be a little against those wins as the mention of every good win in those times has been qualified by what made that easier.
Technically it is correct that we didn’t win any series of importance outside the subcontinent. But how many times had we won even “matches” outside India before that? Just some 13 times. In this duration we won at least one test in England, WI and Australia and SL, not counting Zim/BD.
And whoever has witnessed any Indian test series in Pakistan before knows very well that a Pak team in complete shambles could always regroup when it was against India. I wouldn’t dismiss a test series win for an Indian team in Pakistan regardless of whatever circumstances it was played in. In the 80’s it looked impossible that an Indian team would have enough confidence and temperament to play to its potential in Pak.
I am not trying to differentiate between Ganguly and Dravid as captains here, but I have also been watching test cricket for more than 20 years and in those 3-4 years from 2000 we did win some good tests.
Check this: From 1932-2000 we won 13 tests outside India.
After 2000 we have won 12. Sure, that’s including BD and Zim. But we did go to Zim in ‘92 and ‘98 and we all know what happened.
India has gone past 600 only 7 times outside India - 5 of those have come after 2000.
At the time of the summer break of 2004 (after which it took a turn down), Tendulkar, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid all had their career best scores against Australia and Pakistan, and except for that immortal innings of Laxman at home, those would have been all outside India.
It surely did not happen that often before 2000!