Popular opinion, misconceptions and the ODI genius that Shikhar Dhawan is

At this moment in time, we, ordinary beings like you and me, have a voice louder than we’ve ever done up until now. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to die down anytime soon.

Social media has done us all a massive favour, and boy have we made full use of it. Like me, sitting in my study and writing articles while yet not having completed college. Democracy has been successful in making sure we are the deciders about our own fate, the way we are governed, the way our lives shape up. Social media has given us a chance to raise our voices for important matters like these definitely, but it’s also enabled us to influence relatively unimportant decisions.

Nothing speaks like popular opinion, does it?

In India, Cricket is something entirely different from what it’s originators had meant it to be, a leisure sport to unwind after hard days at work. For Indians, as the popular phrase goes it’s not a sport, but a religion. It’s natural then that fans of the game have their own opinions, their views shaped by different factors for different people. Some cricketers get lucky, they are loved across the country. A few others are not so fortunate, always the subject of jokes and hatred, often for reasons inexplicable.

A common human trait, which will be found almost in every person is ignorance. We have a very disturbing tendency to base our argument in support of or against an issue on a wrong premise. And as any student of logic and many otherwise would also tell you, any argument based on a false or incorrect premise doesn’t stand any chance of being correct. It’s always faulty.

Scout your Facebook or Twitter or any other opinion sharing website and you’ll be surprised at how many premises of arguments which have mass appeal are actually flawed.

Linking the two things mentioned above together is the segue I’d like to choose in coming to the topic here: How the popular opinion that most on the internet world share about Shikhar Dhawan being an inconsistent ODI cricketer is baseless and simply put, a load of crap.

Shikhar Dhawan made a statement with his very first innings in Test cricket

Images that our minds tend to remember, the moments which made possible those images often shape up our thinking and opinions.

Think Shikhar Dhawan and what comes to mind is that fastest hundred on Test debut by an Indian against Australia in 2013. The dive for the hundredth run, the wide smile, the raising of both the arms, body leaning back in a manner almost regal. And then, that famous twirl of the moustache.

That was the first image, the defining image that made Dhawan a part of our collective cricketing consciousness. He now occupied a small part of our mind, our memory specifically, as that ultra-confident hunk who could time it sweet and score quick.

But his Test debut wasn’t to be a catalyst for greatness in that format and after four years and 23 Tests, that innings of 187 remains his highest score and a bar he’ll never reach again.

His struggles have been painful. He’s been given chances but his shortcomings, much too frequent and evident against the moving ball have resulted in premature dismissals and strings of failures.

He’s not a consistent Test player, that summation is correct. The numbers and the naked eye, while you watch him play, suggest as much.

But where we go wrong is when we cite his Test match struggles while making the illogical claim that he shouldn’t be in the Indian ODI team.

Why, if you wonder, do we do this, you will come to the realisation that this is because the defining Dhawan image we have is of him decimating Australia on Test debut and then the succession of failures. We subconsciously project his Test match inconsistency, his slide, onto his ODI game, which actually, as statistics suggest has been amongst the best ever since he became a regular in 2013.

Why we do this are the intricacies of what goes on in our mind when making such assumptions is a topic for a more learned author and not specific to sports.

The basic point being that Dhawan is an exceptionally good ODI player and that it is in our head, or was as recently as before the Champions Trophy, that he doesn’t deserve to be on the side and is not good enough.

In reality, he isn’t just good enough at ODI Cricket, he’s actually quite wonderful.

Dhawan didn’t have the best of times against England

On 15 January this year, India played England in an ODI at Pune, a match remembered for being Virat Kohli’s first as full-time ODI captain and also one in which he and newbie Kedar Jadhav smashed scintillating centuries taking India to a pretty amazing victory.

Apart from the well-deserved praise heaped on both Kohli and Jadhav, the calls to drop Dhawan from the side were rapidly increasing. KL Rahul, with 199 to his name the last time he played for India had emerged as a potential batting superstar of the highest class and in our minds, he was a better bet than Dhawan. This despite the fact that he had played just three ODIs before this, all against Zimbabwe.

Just for context, Dhawan had 3078 runs from 73 innings with nine centuries at an average of 44 and strike rate of 90 at this stage.

But he was opening with Rahul in Pune since Rohit Sharma was out injured. He struggled quite a bit and finally edged an attempted lofted cover drive to the third man boundary for just 1. The next game, he fell in a manner reminiscent of his Test match game, forced on the back foot by two short balls and edged the next one with his feet not moving and bat dangling meekly away from his feet. He had managed eight more runs this time.

But the calls grew louder and in the third game, he was, for the first time since 2013 pushed back onto the bench.

It had been a sharp fall in his fortunes, and one for which he wasn’t all to blame actually.

Shikhar Dhawan has been absolutely phenomenal for India in ICC tournaments

One of the greatest things made possible by the many exceptional people who graced this world with their presence has been the ability to document facts, to put them in words, pictures or videos so they become immortal, usable even after decades and centuries.

It’s not incorrect when they say that when all else fails you, when you can’t trust anything, go back to numbers, to facts that provide you with a logical and firm base to make your decisions.

People could have done better in this regard when it came to Dhawan’s ODI game.

Firstly, there’s hardly anyone in world Cricket who has delivered on the big stage, in the ICC tournaments better than Dhawan. He’s played two editions of the Champions Trophy, in 2013 and 2017 and one World Cup, in 2015. In all three, he was India’s top runscorer, also their highest century maker. In fact, in both the Champions Trophy editions, he was the highest run-getter in the tournament.

In the World Cup, he was the fifth highest run getter. He made 412 runs in eight innings at the World Cup, 82 more than the next Indian on the list. In the 2013 Champions Trophy, he had 363 runs with two centuries again, 136 runs more than Jonathan Trott, the second highest scorer. In the 2017 edition, he had 338 runs to his name with one century and two half-centuries.

These are not just impressive numbers, these are bloody phenomenal. Kids dream of scoring big runs in big matches, in big tournaments. This guy does that and does it remarkably well.

Reality check number one to critics

Dhawan has showed time and again that he can take apart the best bowling line-ups in the world

It’s often said about him that he scores only against weak bowling attacks. False again. He averages 45 against Australia, 44 against Pakistan and 47 against South Africa. It’s only against England that he falls a bit short, averaging 30. Averages of 45, 44 and 47 against three of the four best bowling sides in the world very seamlessly snuffs out this notion out of the way.

Reality check number two

Next, some say that he does nothing much outside of the ICC tournaments. This comes especially when you give them numbers in the three tournaments he’s played in. But they’re wrong again. In bilateral games, he averages an excellent 42. Taking a minimum of four matches played, he averages 38 in Australia, 50 in Bangladesh, 52 in England, 20 in New Zealand, 41 in South Africa and 52 in Zimbabwe. Again, there’s just one blot, New Zealand.

Reality check number three

Shikhar Dhawan was back to his best in 2016

Then comes another set which says that it was justified when they called for him to be dropped before the England series this January. He hasn’t performed at all after the World Cup they say. Go check your numbers, I say.

Between 26 March 2015, the day India crashed out of the World Cup and 15 January 2017, the day of the first ODI against England, India played a total of 24 matches, quite less according to their standards. Six of them came against Zimbabwe where India always rested their senior players. A further five came against New Zealand last October when Dhawan was out injured having broken his hand in the Kolkata Test match against them. So, in this period, Dhawan played just 13 matches, but still, his returns were impressive.

First up came the three-match series against Bangladesh just after the World Cup in which almost all Indian batsmen struggled and India lost, but Dhawan managed 158 runs at an average of almost 53.

After that was a five-match series against South Africa at home. Here, Dhawan was uncharacteristically kept quiet and managed just 126 runs at 26. But a month and a half later, in Australia, in the January of 2016, he was back to his best, hammering 287 runs in five innings at an average of 58.

In these 13 games, he averaged almost 44, struck at 92 runs per 100 balls and had six scores above fifty, one of them being a century and two others above 75.

Reality check number four

Because India played a spate of T20Is in the first half of last year and also the IPL after that, we became accustomed to seeing Dhawan out of his comfort zone for he isn’t a very good T20 player. He takes time to get going, somehow his timing always seems to go awry and he can’t seem to play the big shots.

His strike rate of 113 in T20Is in exceptionally poor compared to the modern day standards. Thus the belief that he has the same problem in ODIs as well. Again, absolutely way off the marker. He strikes at 92 after 84 ODIs.

Out of the 19 series and tournaments he’s played since June 2013, he has had a strike rate of more than 90 eleven times and above hundred six times. And only four times has it gone down below 80.

Reality check number five

Dhawan has struggled in Tests and T20s. And those felt like the only two formats India was playing ever since the beginning of last year. We saw Dhawan’s misery and reached the conclusion that it would continue in ODI cricket too.

Our argument though was based on a factually incorrect premise and thus deserved to be thrown out of the window.

The bottom line, as per se

Shikhar Dhawan: Gabbar by nature, Gabbar by numbers

Thankfully, the selectors didn’t fall prey to the loud calls of the masses to drop him or to the tendency to do the irrational. They stuck to documented facts, which overwhelmingly point to Dhawan being an exceptionally consistent ODI player.

This wasn’t proven wrong in the Champions Trophy either. 338 runs in five games isn’t a bad tally, is it?

He also made 87 in the first match against the West Indies on Friday and a solid 63 today. This year, until now, he has 500 runs from nine matches. 488 from seven if you count from the Champions Trophy onwards. This year, he averages 55 and strikes at 98. He also has a century and four fifties.

Last year he made 287 runs in five matches with an average of 58 and a strike rate of 100. He also had a century and a couple of fifties.

2015 brought him 745 runs from 20 games at an average of 37 with a strike rate of 86. He had two centuries and four half centuries. Not great numbers here, but quite good in their own regard.

In 2014, he churned out 815 runs in 18 innings at 48 while striking at 87. A hundred and six half-centuries.

2013, his breakthrough year, had him scoring 1162 runs in 26 games at 50 with a strike rate of 98. Five hundreds and four fifties to boot.

A record like that, a big match and big stage temperament like that is what every young kid strives for.

Talk about him being excluded from the ODI team should never have materialised. And it’s time that now we learnt to keep his Test and T20 struggle apart when talking about his ODI game. It’s like factoring in the taste of the chicken steak you had for lunch when you’re being asked whether the ice cream you’re having for dessert is fresh or not.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

Hopefully, now it will stop, these question marks lingering around his place in the team and the constant scrutiny with which he’s viewed.

And if it does not, throw personal considerations and biases out of the equation and argue on plain, hard facts, his statistics viewed as a standalone and also relatively, against the numbers of the giants of modern day ODI cricket.

And then you’ll find that Shikhar Dhawan doesn’t lag far behind the today’s greats, not far at all actually. He isn’t just a good ODI player. He is one of the best. Even if no one on Earth would think so, the numbers would. And you can’t argue with that, can you?