09 March 2012

A cricket fan's tribute to Rahul Dravid.

Dear Rahul Dravid,

Today I am happy.  Happy that you retired on your own terms, from international cricket and indeed from domestic cricket.  I wish you all the very best for your future endeavours and I hope you find the peace, prosperity and contentment that you seek, with your family members and friends.

A lot has been said, and many have waxed eloquent about your many achievements, and I really cannot add to any of that.  Thank You for the years of dedication, and the many accomplishments that have embellished Indian cricket over the years.

I am not sad that yet another son of the soil, a "mannina maga" as they may say in Kannada, is trudging off into the sunset, leaving behind an eerie silence and a void that may never be filled.  In fact I am hoping the void will never be filled, for I don't want to see another stodgy wall, a sticky customer who neither left nor got on with it. 

I am in fact, very relieved that there won't be that much blocking of a cricket ball, when the purpose really is to score runs.  But, you are a gentleman, and will no doubt take my criticism in your stride.  For that I salute you.  I also salute you for having made your mark as a gentleman in a sport that the English have reduced from being a means of fun and entertainment, into one of attrition and suffering, of Tests and survival.  I salute you for being a consummate slave to this atrocious idea with such dignity, and making it look like this is the sort of role model we should wish upon the youngsters of independent India.

Even more relieved I am, most of all, that you won't have to struggle to show us again how difficult batting is, how the art of smacking a ball with a piece of wood several times the mass of the ball is an essentially excruciating one, a terrifying prospect, especially when the motivation is, on a cold English morning, to please a smattering of warmly dressed crusty old Englishmen with steely stares.  Alas you will no longer be around to score so slowly that a talented youngster at the other end blocks his way to zero in several balls just to show you respect.

But Sir, you are a modest man!  And you will understand that times have changed, for you are fundamentally such an intelligent and articulate gent who never put a foot wrong, uttered so much as one word out of place, or scored one run more than was impossibly difficult as you would have us believe.  No Sir, you can do no wrong, for you never ventured to do anything other than right.  Any surprise you are right handed?  I apologize, that was left handed.

I did enjoy the way you whacked Allan Donald at his peak into the stands in one of those rare moments of freedom that managed to corrupt your soul, and I did enjoy that forty ball seventy you scorched in an IPL game, and I am deeply ashamed for that enjoyment.  It must have been the most corrupt moment of your soul's journey and I was, shamelessly part of it.  Alas, I am human.  No longer shall you allow yourself the temptation, and for that I am happy.

Hordes of cricket fans somehow expect cricketers to be role models, but Sir, I swear I would never put that burden on you or any of your teammates.  Hordes of women love you for being Mr. Dependable, but I swear I would never depend on you.  Many paeans of character have been heaped upon you and most of them are deserving, but some of us have secretly been oblivious to such displays of character, wrapped as we were in the simple matters of enjoyment.  We do not lurk but increasingly roam in the open, wary of discipline, wary of the straight line, and of the straight jacket.  We shamelessly tout our freedom and do not see the value of voluntary enslavement anymore.  That era, sadly has passed like a glorious brooding cloud of great mass.

We all enjoyed seeing you as Jammy, and there is yet to be discovered a single disagreement on the acceptability of Kissan Jam.  For that I thank you.  In one fell swoop, you united all that need to eat breakfast, especially those of us who had to have jam with bread or biscuits.  Truly sweet!  The jam I mean.  I mean, the jam too.  You get it.

Some of us never grew out of this notion that sport was for fun, and not for inflicting torture upon ourselves.  Some of us actually flocked the stadiums and television sets, and internet connections hoping to see the team we supported win.  We enjoyed the brashness of a contest, that rustic bristle of competition, and the sheer joy of the celebration of the human spirit.  Some of us even appreciated the crudeness of athleticism and the vile taste of watching the human form in peak performance.  Somehow, it was all about enjoyment.  How wrong we all were!  A thousand apologies for the heaps of wrong expectations from us.

For those numerous occasions on which you helped coax this nation's cricketing legions out of illusions of delirious victory, tempered us with the sweet taste of a hard fought loss, with your score sizable and the strike rate modest as only you could define it, and for teaching humility to the batsmen who followed you who thought they had it in them to score a mountain of runs in a flash, and for delaying all their successes to the point where they understood humility is a greater virtue than ambition, I thank you.  None of that would have been possible if the Kohlis and Rainas and Dhonis had been unleashed upon the opposition without the tempering influence of that bat of yours that stood in the way.

What do these modern cricketers know about being gentlemen?  They just play the game, provide enjoyment, win a lot, hate to lose, make a lot of money, bring us to the brink of our sensible existences, and inject us with joy.  Sir, you will be missed.  And what of that other stoic gentleman, the tall stallion of thy same stable, that veteran of scowling disposition whose smile may invite punishment upon the human race and hence was kept out of the sunlight?  Perhaps you will join him in apt company?  May your tribe flourish!

Truly, us simple mortals do not deserve a champion like you, Mr. Dravid.  We might choke upon the very proposition, unable to handle the magnitude of such a challenge. 

We just don't measure up against a wall.

Somehow, we will have to find a way around it.

Thank you!

- BSK