Re: Has Dravid had a greater contribution to Indian cricket.....

by Batman Fri 16 Mar 2012, 07:36

Regarding the Tendulkar vs Dravid argument, it can be said that Tendulkar was for long the only reason people watched test matches, early in his career when we had a poor overseas side and were only tigers at home, lambs abroad. But where putting us on the test map and winning us more games, drawing where we should have lost or building our test legacy brick by brick for most of last decade, it has to be credited to Dravid. He was our best test batsman ever. he didn't sacrifice test duty to play IPL the way Tendulkar chose to do last IPL to skip national duty in WI. It is then befitting that SRT has missed the boat on both times we won a rubber in WI and both came under either Dravid the batsman or captain. Dravid was the heart and soul of our best test side ever in ways Tendulkar cannot even be thought of.

Interesting article I read today on rediff on how this can be best illustrated -
Dravid's finesse stands out against Tendulkar's figures! - LINK!

Notably -

Since Dravid's debut in 1996, India has won or drawn 11 Test series overseas (excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe), and Dravid was the chief architect in more than a third of those -- Man of the Series when Ganguly's India held Steve Waugh's Australia in Australia after 16 long years; Man of the series when India held Nasser Hussain's England in England after 18 years; Man of the Series when we beat Brian Lara's West Indies in the West Indies after 35 years; Man of the Match in the series decider against Pakistan in Pakistan when we beat them for the first time since the two countries were free in 1947. And get this -- before the last England series, India had lost only one Test when Dravid had scored a hundred; and he had scored 30 of them by then.

That's the kind of stat that would be hard to match, even for a Tendulkar. Sure, Tendulkar has more runs across the board, a higher average across the board and will soon have a hundred hundreds, but, as mindboggling as they are, they all speak to the sheer quantity of runs he's piled on. What do they tell you about the quality of those runs or the context in which he got them?

Zip. Apart from the phenomenal 146 against South Africa in 2011, and a few obscure supporting acts, Tendulkar has nothing compelling to show that he was as impactful as Dravid in building a team that travelled better and one that would eventually become Number 1.

Yet, for all the truth that an in-depth analysis of stats may offer, it will be a grave injustice to size up Dravid by that alone.

by Batman Sat 17 Mar 2012, 08:01

So yeah, Dravid has been a bigger Man Friday followed second by VVS Laxman ahead of all else including SRT where turning test matches on head is concerned.