Foot-in-Mouth

The recent comments made by Rahul Dravid about the report presented by Indian Cricket Team's manager for the tour of South Africa, Chetan Desai, did not come to me as a surprise. Not that I was expecting such a comment from him but its more a question of capability of doing such a thing or making such a comment, which might be considered silly by many. Talking about one person's credentials in the Indian Cricket History, who is doing a managerial job with the team, is at best laughable. Furthermore, since the comments made were more about general attitude of Sehwag's and not about batting or bowling technicality, they don't seem unfair either. No cricketing knowledge is needed to gauge general attitude. And I think, Mr. Dravid erred in criticising a person while batting for his player. Defending your player is one thing and questioning managers credibility is quite another. So, why am I not surprised given Dravid is a nice guy and all that? Simply because he has done such silly things before. Where he goes overboard. Two incidents come to mind. First one is when Dravid was still hanging on to his one day place by keeping wickets. During one appeal altercation, led obviously by Ganguly Dada, he became a bit too out of hand. I don't remember the match but I clearly remember seeing it. I was surprised then. I think the umpire gave him a warning. This was probably sometime during a Pakistan series. Ganguly, for all his show business, doesn't go too far. Never mind, the number of fines he has had. He was shrewd that way. The other incident was declaring Tendulkar while stranded on 194, I guess, in a Multan test during one of the recent Pakistan tours. I mean, you don't declare a batsman on 194. Send him a message. Get your runs before this or that time. Even Ganguly, out of the test due to some injury, wouldn't have done that. As Ganguly said later, "Kabhi Kabhi Galti ho Jati Hai...". So, Mr. nice guy is nice most of the times. But sometimes, may be, just gets a bit overzealous, I guess.