
Issue No 88		16 March 2001

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The Locker Room

Jim Maher on India's Forgotten Hero

Folklore will always associate two names - VVS Laxman and Harbhajan Singh - with India's startling second Test victory that reinvigorated world cricket, and rightly so, but it should also tell the tale of Rahul Dravid, for he more than anyone, personified the turnaround.

Dravid can play - nine Test centuries and an average in the high 40s are testament to that - but, it seemed, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath had the wood on him as completely as their team-mates over his.

For five Tests, across more than a calendar year, the Indore-born craftsman promised without delivering but, always, there were signs that he was better-equipped, mentally and emotionally, than most.

For a start, on bouncing, seaming Australian wickets, Dravid was able to rise above the lemming-like urge to flirt with McGrath when the big fellow was in the zone - ie, about a foot outside off stump.

His team-mates were mesmerised into offering catching practise to the Australian behind-the-wicket field, a practise about as compatible with longevity as jay-walking on Parramatta Rd.

While Dravid was able to eschew the booming cover drive on seaming tracks, he struggled to find another avenue for scoring runs.

Some felt the Aussies had him mentally but others held this cerebral cricketer was above, rather than intimidated by, the swaggering and sledging which went on around him.

The first Test in India looked a bit like Groundhog Day. Nobody else, excepting a couple Sachin Tendulkar cameos, showed much inclination to stick around and guts it out.

Playing lone hands, at least in the grit department, against an Australian attack under little pressure, he found runs throttled out of him as he battled into the 20s and 40s at a pace which was never going to rattle his opponents.

Dravid is a quality batsman but, against the odds, not one

who can go toe-to-toe with the world's best bowlers and wrest the initiative from their grasp.

What he needed was a stroke player to stand and deliver, one who would cause McGrath, Warne and Jason Gillespie some doubt, maybe even force them to adjust lines and lengths.

In Vangipurappu Venkat Sai (VVS) Laxman he found such an ally and together they orchestrated one of the most amazing fightbacks the game has seen.

Laxman, tall and athletic, took risks no ordinary batsman should contemplate. Repeatedly, he stood tall and bashed seamers through the off-side with barely a hint of footwork.

The doubters would argue a good eye and timeing might work for such a man on the sub-continent but never where balls move about. They would do well to recall the bucaneering hundred he pillaged off the same crew barely 12 months earlier, in Sydney, of all places.

Over seven and a half hours he and Dravid ignited a huge Calcutta crowd, first defying, then demolishing their opponents. Having come together with India four down and yet to force Australia bat again, Laxman smashed 281 and Dravid carved out 180.

Certainly, Laxman rattled the bowlers and opened the door for his more refined team-mate but, equally, without Dravid their could have been no double century for the country's newest national hero.

Perhaps the match's most telling moment came when Dravid, after so much frustration against these belligerent opponents, crossed for his own century.

Uncharacteristically, he ripped off his helmet and thrust his arms aggressively aloft, suggesting the artisan had become a warrior.

Certainly, it is what India needs.

Too often, of recent times, their cricket has smacked of something elite and conservative - all the technique and self-belief without any of the desire to get dirty in bear pit.

It has led a talented bunch of individuals to routinely underform as a team.

Dravid, by attitude and action, has helped turn that around and the whole cricket world now hangs on what will happen in Chennai over the next week.

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Issue 88 contents

Interview: Labor Law
Shadow Attorney General Robert McClelland outlines his plans for workers entitlements, legal aid and a Bill of Rights

Unions: Poetic Justice
The ACTU kicked off its 2001 Living Wage campaign this week with a new shock tactic: poetry.

Technology: Big Brother�s Legacy
Organisations with restrictive staff email polices risk locking themselves in the Industrial Age by treating their staff as units to be monitored.

Corporate: Scumbags Exposed
On the eve of the inaugural Corporate Scumbags Tour, we look at the worst of the worst from the Top End of Town.

International: Playing Away
Pat Ranald looks at a proposal to hold Australian companies to basic standards when they invest in developing countries.

Environment: Nuclear Titanics
The Maritime Union has joined Greenpeace in a campaign to stop our seas becoming a nuclear highway.

History: Out of the Bog
Neale Towart looks at the life of big Jim Larkin, one of the heroes of an Irish trade union movement that continues to thrive.

Politics: Westie�s Macquarie Street Alert
The Workers MLC, Ian West, provides the first in a series of regular rundowns on the upcoming Parliamentary session

Review: The Next American Century?
How will the United States maintain its global power in an era when the very notion of the nation-state is under challenge?

Satire: Dollar Crashes Through Psychological 0.00c Barrier
The bedevilled Australian dollar dropped below the crucial 0.00c barrier losing its battle to avoid the humiliation of being worth less than the commemorative Bradman coins distributed by the Sunday Telegraph last weekend.

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