Count Dravid's runs and not his age

It is unfortunate that a player of such talents is being treated so inconsiderately by a bunch of people. They seem to have no idea of what to do with this world-class player.

During the Twenty20 World Cup in England, when the Indian batsmen displayed their weakness against bouncing deliveries, the selectors turned toward the technically perfect Dravid to rescue them. Dravid showed his teammates how to play on bouncy wickets but, unfortunately, his team could not win the Champions Trophy.

For the Australia series, which is going to be played on the flat Indian wickets, they decided that Dravid can be dropped comfortably. Usually a player is dropped due to lack of form but in Dravid's case, it is nothing but sheer convenience.

It is so easy to drop Dravid now. All that they do is count his age and announce that he should no longer be blocking the place of a youngster. They conveniently ignore the fact that he is a man who has scored 10,765 runs in One-day cricket with 12 centuries and 82 half centuries on all types of wickets.

It is true that aged players must give way for youngsters but it is wrong to drop a player who is still fit and is a bowler's headache. If the idea of the selectors is to experiment with youngsters then they should do it during a series against Bangladesh and not while taking on the world champions Australia. Dravid has his drawbacks. He is not a hard hitter like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, but all the batsmen in a One-day team need not be hard hitters. If a team's top order collapses, a stable batsman at one end is badly needed to put the team back on track. There is no other better batsman than Dravid who can play that role.

Headache for opposition

Dravid's presence is a headache for all captains because if he stays on he can consume the overs from their strike bowlers. So captains are often forced to introduce their inexperienced bowlers against Dravid and that opens scoring opportunities for the batsman at the other end. It is not necessary that in one-day cricket, both the batsmen should be hitting boundaries. The question now, is if India loses the first two one-dayers will they turn towards Dravid again? To protect their blunder, they may not and if the selectors do, they may once again be called a bunch of jokers like in the past.