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The more appropriate word for Dravid’s decision — not just to me but to every single person who follows cricket and was watching that day —is ‘stupid’. There are other words too, and my network of cricket friends used the whole gamut of them, some of the printable ones were asinine, idiotic, foolish, ridiculous, brainless.
What could have been going through the Indian captain’s head? I can only think of the Kolkata Test of March 2001 when Australia asked India to follow on and lost. Let’s look at the score then. Australia 445, India 171. Lead 274. India follow on and score 657 for 7 on the back of a huge partnership between Laxman and Dravid. Australia, asked to get 384 to win on the last day are all out for 212, thus losing by 171 runs.
Anant Gaundalkar, who can conjure up cricket statistics at the snap of a finger, tells me that there have been only two other similar instances in the history of cricket. The first was inSydney in 1894. Australia 586, England 325. England 261 behind asked to follow on and score 437.
Australia batting again score 166, ten runs short of the target. The second instance was in 1981 at Leeds when Australia batting first scored 401. England, all out for 174 and therefore 227 behind, followed on and scored 356. Australia was skittled out for 111 and thus fell 18 runs short.
If you study these three results you will see that the Indian lead of 319 in the Oval test was far bigger than the others, so if India were to be set a target of 150 in the fourth innings, England in their second knock would have had to score 469, a tall order for any team.
But just suppose that Dravid’s own experience of the Kolkata test made him extra cautious, did he have to be inflexible about the target that was set for England?
From the timing of the declaration it is obvious that the figure was 500. But surely a target has to have some relationship with the number of overs available to score it in? As things stand, England was being asked to make this monumental score in 110
overs which works out at 4.5 runs per over.
Suppose instead, Dravid had set them even 450 to get, another impossible target, India would have had the extra overs to get England all out.
Look at it another way. India batted a second time and declared at 180 for six, but consumed 58 overs to do so. That works out to 3.1 runs per over. If India had batted instead at five runs per over and we would have had 22 extra overs in which to get England all out.
“It’s easy to criticise from the drawing room,” has been the Captain’s refrain after the match, making all commentators, critics and by extension, even the selectors redundant, because only the players would know what’s right. There was a similar note of arrogance from Dravid after a recent tour when he lit into a tour official publicly for writing a negative report.
“What are his credentials?” Dravid roared, “How many test matches has he played?”
We thus have aggression directed at those who are critical, but meekness when confronting the opposition (no follow-on, a delayed declaration, etc. ). Even Saurav Ganguly, our most aggressive captain showed this meekness in the field; in the famous Kolkata test, he was so scared of Australia scoring the runs that he batted on and on before declaring and finally the Australian tail almost denied us victory.
In contrast, look at the Australians. You will have observed that in all the three test matches lost by the team enforcing the follow on, that team was Australian. That’s because Australians are never afraid to lose. Which is why they so often win.
They might lose an occasional game or two, but in the final analysis they will always come out on top. Think about that Dilip Vengsarkar and Chandu Borde. Think about that Rahul Dravid and Think Tank. It’s time we thought about being Australian.