Rahul Dravid's T20 career - A fairy tale without a happy ending

Well, that’s how it always was throughout his career. He was the man for the crisis and not for the celebration. And that’s how his career ended with CLT20.

He is the man with very less individual records in the game of cricket. People worship and like many cricketers, but when it comes to Dravid, they respect him.

His record of partnerships and the number of balls that he has faced in Test cricket show you what a great player he was. The record of him having just 12 hundreds but 83 fifties in ODIs shows that he was the ultimate team player.

When I started watching cricket as a kid, he had just come into the Indian team. He was playing conventional Test batting in ODIs. A lot of kids didn’t like that as they got bored watching him bat. But somehow, I liked the way he batted, his style of defence and more importantly his calmness.

I grew up watching him adapt. After 2000, the face of ODI cricket started changing. It needed more aggression. He adapted. That’s Rahul Dravid’s strength – he adapts. By adapting, I don’t mean that he became a big hitter, but he found ways of scoring faster with his same old style of batting.

India had a lack of wicket-keeper/batsmen, and he filled in those shoes comfortably. He always came to bat when the team had lost quick wickets or when someone was scoring well at the other end.

Both the times, his role was to ensure that wickets didn’t fall quickly and after doing that, when the team was in good position, he’d sacrifice his wicket for the sake of a better run-rate.

That’s how his ODI career went on until the end of 2007, when they said they wanted a so-called ‘young’ side. But then again, they called the man for the crisis back into the side, not just once but two times – in 2009 and 2011.

India had just won the ODI World Cup in 2011, with no Dravid. But they needed him four months later in England when the ‘young’ guns of the World Cup faltered on the bouncy pitches. Well, I can’t think of any example in the cricket world, where a veteran would be treated like this. But he retired gracefully too in ODIs, scoring a fifty in his last match and building a partnership with Kohli who went on to score a hundred, like he had done innumerable times in his career.

When it came to IPL, people thought this man wouldn’t fit in the slam bag T20 version of the game. But once again, he did what he did best. He adapted.

He was the top-scorer for his teams in IPL 1 and 4. With the mediocre team that he had got in the first season he couldn’t do much. He scored 75 off 36 with 6 sixes (you’re reading it right!) in a match with no support from his team-mates. He did fairly well in IPL 2 and 3 too.

With other players finding their form for RCB, the team management thought they didn’t have a place for this Bangalorean, and they didn’t pick him at the second auction. But it was not over yet. Rajasthan picked him. They needed an experienced player to strengthen their batting, and Dravid did exactly that.

He scored the most runs for them in that season, even though the team didn’t have a good season. With Shane Warne signing off after the 4th season, Rajasthan picked Dravid as the captain, to many people’s surprise. They needed someone to find the talent in young players and mentor them and they looked no further than Dravid. Even though RR ended up in 7th position in the 2012 IPL, they had found many talents (Rahane in particular), and the team was in good spirits.

Come 2013, we all saw a different Dravid. ‘The Captain’ Dravid. People had criticized his captaincy at the beginning of the IPL. In the 2013 season, he showed plenty of captaincy masterstrokes.

He brought young players like Sanju Samson into the limelight and he himself scored well too with four fifties in the season. Controversies at the end of the season shook the team’s spirits but Dravid held it together and they qualified for the Champions League by coming third.

CLT20 was his last tournament in competitive cricket. Even though he was not in good touch with the bat, he captained really well and with consecutive 5 wins.

This time he helped RR find a very special talent who was 42 years old – Praveen Tambe. Tambe ended up as the highest wicket taker in the tournament, and not even a single six was hit off his bowling. All the RR wins were not just about individual contributions; everyone had pitched in. If Man of the Match title was awarded for captaincy, Dravid would have got it for every game.

In the final of CLT20, everyone in Mumbai Indians played like they were in the form of their life. RR put up a good fight, but it was just not enough.

Dravid came into bat at number 8, putting the team’s interests ahead like he has done always. By the time he was in, the match was already out of hand and he got out attempting a wild slog. That’s how the cricket career of this gentleman ended.

Then again, we are Dravid fans and we don’t have happy endings. We are used to these circumstances which happened throughout his career.

We don’t have to hope for victories and achievements to happen with Dravid, we can just find pleasure in the artistic square cut/cover drive that he plays and his satisfactory smile. We can never be too happy. But we can be proud. Always.