Saurav Dada...The Forgotten Hero!!!

Unjustified criticism is a popular desi pastime in most of our households. Knock over the hero image and belittle his or her achievements by humiliating their performances. It has rarely ceased to surprise me that in the past years, how players who have performed well for our country have been ridiculed by those who have not played a professional club game let alone a Ranji Trophy match or in a Test.

I agree to the fact that most of us forget to realize the pressure the cricketers take on themselves when they walk onto the field. Dada has been a servant of India ever so admiringly and to call him off about 2 yrs back early in his career was a sin. I believe in a player more than the administrators do. Players do not play down their time for money, which of-course is an essential element for them to get lured to play for India, but they make enough money from the initial 10-12 yrs playing career. I believe they would still have the zeal in them to perform and satisfy their individual goals. Forgotten is how months earlier he had defied a rampant Australian attack by scoring 144 in the first Test in Brisbane: walking out to bat with the top-order a mess at 60 odd for 3, Tendulkar lbw to Jason Gillespie for a duck, and later 4 down with very little on the board. But India still managed a first innings lead because of his century. The match was eventually drawn due to time loss due to bad weather. Also forgotten is how he led India to a World Cup final in South Africa when there were those who wanted India to win but Ganguly to fail.

Put yourselves in the player seat and come up with the daring acts that Dada had crafted. Be it, opening for India and consistently performing against arch rivals Pakistan, or defying his critics for not being able to play the short ball, or winning the all important overseas ODI series in England, or the World Cup episode, or getting Sehwag, Yuvraj and many youngsters into the team, he has done things which most cricketers in India would never lay hands on.

If everybody is thinking that, it is Dhoni doing wonders today, take a chill pill, because the foundations were very laid strongly, under Dada's leadership years back. For a fact, to most of the people's ignorance, it was on Dada's recommendation that Dhoni found a place in the side after his flamboyant 200 in a domestic ODI even without a game from the Ranji. Raina, Yuvraj, Sehwag, Gambhir, Zaheer, Nehra, Irfan Pathan, Parthiv Patel and many more, who were and are playing wonders for India today were experimented during his helm. If a team has to be built, it needs the backing of a captain who is never against experimenting. And Dada had plenty of that to offer. He picked sides specific to conditions and made them deliver. He prompted Sehwag to open in SA, got Yuvraj and Kaif to lead the fielding department during the WC and things that I do not recollect at the moment. But even while doing all this, he had to satisfy the then established players like Srinath, Kumble, Prasad, Azhar, and more.

So I am writing this today, so that all of you can ask yourselves, if you were fair in criticizing Dada and wanting him to do bad so that he can be thrown out of the team.

He has an aura that can never be replaced. People who know me might doubt my ethical values for I had not been fair myself, but I feel my comments on him in the past were always to see him perform better if not best. To justify my writings above, I have been an ardent admirer of Dada ever since his century against Pakistan in the inaugural Independence Cup in Dhaka. His shoes are too big to be filled in, and if people feel that Yuvraj can do that today, he better prove himself to counter the Best, which in my opinion, is unfortunately least on offer these days than those of Dada.

There was agony in Australia in 1991-92 where he was largely misunderstood by a self-indulgent team management system (of-course, it still is); then, a heroic 'debut' century at Lord's a little more than four years later. These are all part of the often haphazard journey.