When the virus called "Dravid" struck Royals

Any sportsman, if he is more gifted than the rest, is sure to taste victory. Such victories give him identity. As an adage goes, “Nothing succeeds like success”, If a sportsman succeeds,  his popularity grows and from there on, he becomes a sought after public figure.

I know one such individual in the world of cricket. In fact, there are hundreds of such cricketers and he was just one among them. He was a Pakistani and his name was Javed Miandad. He was one of the greatest talents and cricket fans even from India, leave alone Pakistan, used to like him. Till Benson & Hedges World Cup, which was held Down Under in the year 1992, people used to identify him with the last ball six which he hit of Chetan Sharma to win a match in Sharjah against India. That scenario soon changed.

When the match between India and the eventual champions, Pakistan took place in 1992 World Cup, Miandad became famous for an infamous thing. That day, the term “Sportsmanship”, which we used to associate with the gentleman’s game like cricket, was dead and buried by the behavior of the star batsman of Pakistan, Javed Miandad. The way he mocked the Indian Wicket Keeper, Kiran More on the field, time and again, jumping like a frog, hit the headlines the next day. It was something which was treated with despise and contempt by many, not to mention Indian fans. From thereon, this boorish behavior of Miandad became his identity. The image that he earned by being a great batsman for his country, soon got tarnished by an unruly portrayal of himself on the field.

The aforesaid incident should be a lesson for all the upcoming sportsmen. It is not enough if you earn a name for yourself by winning matches for your team. It is all the more important for any sportsman to win hearts. A sportsman, if he has to maintain his hard earned identity, should see to that his antics or behavior on the field never brings the game to disrepute.

One gentleman who I know is also a cricket player. There are not hundreds or thousands of them whereas he is the only one. He is nicknamed “The wall of Indian cricket team” and he is Rahul Dravid. Infact the great, Sunil Gavaskar has described this man aptly as the last gentleman of the game of cricket, when the latter announced his retirement, not so long ago.

Never once could I see this stylish right hander misbehaving on the field. Inspite of all his successes which he has experienced, he never let the thing get into his head. No human who has played this game could ever pin point Rahul Dravid and say he has behaved inappropriately. Throughout sixteen years of his span in international cricket, not once he had ridiculed the gentleman ship of the game. So, the fans are not going to remember him for any notorious thing and he will only be remembered for many stylish innings that he has played in his awesome career.

His gentlemanliness has probably got injected into the team of Rajasthan Royals which he is captaining right now in DLF IPL season 5. Till last year, when Royals were under the leadership of Shane Warne, with due respect to the legend, was never able to occupy the position at the top when it was about getting assessed on the basis of “Fair Play”. However, in this year, right from the first week of the IPL, no other team has come close to challenging the Royals in dethroning them from the first place of “Fair Play Award”.

Every commentator while running through the teams which are categorized for Fair Play awards, on seeing Rajasthan Royals neatly placed at the top, never fails to mention Rahul Dravid as the reason behind the numero uno rank of his team. This is the name Dravid has earned for himself and it should be a dream of anyone who aspires to take sports as his profession.

Any team can only be as good as its captain and this is what is reflecting in the attitude of Royals who have Dravid as their captain. The calming influence of this gentleman cricketer has really come a long way in taking the team to the top of the Fair play chart. As they say, “The law makers cannot be law breakers” and if they do turn out to be law breakers, every Tom, Dick and Harry would begin to break the law. But when a good leader is chosen, he is sure to imbibe the qualities in him to his subjects and that is what Dravid is doing.

When one sees children playing cricket on streets, there will always be some sort of quarrel going on between them and some even used to punch and hit each other in order to establish their view as right. But, such thing should stop with street cricket. When a cricketer becomes a professional and plays at the national level, he is going to be watched by all. Whoever watches him is going to have him as his/her role model if the player turns out to be a great player. Such a player is now vested with a responsibility. He should know that the way he presents himself in the field will have its influence on the kids who are used to uttering his name in their household day in and day out. When he turns out to be a bad influence, the children are going to be become “bad sports” as a result.

Those who have read the auto biography of the tennis player, Andre Agassi, named “The open” would know how much the kids love their role models and how bad they feel when they find their hero turning out to be someone else in the real life. Agassi when he was a kid, as a diehard Jimmy Connors fan, visited the legend one day. The type of treatment meted out to him by a player of Connors ’class, who has more than 100 titles to his credit shocked him completely and this was well documented by Andre. In such a way, many kids love the cricketers as heroes and it should be the responsibility of every sportsman not to disappoint them.

To conclude, all I can say is – as much as winning matches is important for a cricketer, winning hearts is equally important. Up until now, as I write, though Rajasthan is placed in the sixth position in the team rankings having won only 7 of the 14 matches played by them, they have really conquered the hearts of every cricket fan, thanks to Dravid whose impressive track record, when it comes to perfect behavior, has spread like a virus and embraced the whole team.

I sincerely believe Rajasthan Royals continue to impress sports lovers by their thorough professionalism also and influence other teams in maintaining and safeguarding sportsman spirit.