Debut

                                                           

June 20^th 1996 the day when India played England at Lords is always remembered as Saurav Ganguly’s debut,  the reason being Dada going on to make a century on debut.  But what has been forgotten is one more batsman making a debut alongside Ganguly, who went on to score 95 and fell short by 5 runs on what could have been a memorable debut. That player was Rahul Sharad Dravid.

Such has been the situation ever since his test debut. 

Fate has always played tricks with him and the introvert never got his due. His marathon innings of 180 against Australia in kolkatta in 2001 has been overshadowed by Laxman’s epic 281.

Sachin’s highest score for a long time was 186 against New Zealand  at Hyderabad what people do not remember is the same match Dravid scored a 153.

The highest ever partnership in World cups is 318 between Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. Dravid went on to score 152 in that match but this was again overshadowed by Ganguly’s 183.  

Although Dravid contributed 128 in a record partnership of 410 for the first wicket in Lahore against Pakistan, the match is still remembered for Sehwag’s 254.

There are several such circumstances where other people in the team have hogged the limelight where as Dravid has always been the second best. When it comes to Tests there is no doubt in my mind that he is the best Test batsman India has seen. Maybe people might hate my blog after this but taking performance and match winning innings into consideration he is a better batsman than Sachin. The Averages of both these players are more or less the same but what Sachin had to his advantage is the amount of years he has played which has ended up in him having much more runs than Dravid in tests. Dravid has proved himself in all sorts of conditions and his overseas record speaks a lot about how technically correct he is in comparison to other batsmen in the team, Sachin included.

Sachin may be one of the greatest batsmen the game has ever seen but people need to open their eyes and start appreciating and respecting other gods of cricket.