Dravid or Dhoni: The debate is on

I never thought I will be posting a blog one day. But here I am.

I haven't been doing anything concrete for the last few weeks. The job that I loved the most for the last 8 months is getting stressful and throwing some conundrums to which I have no answer. This coupled with the fact that I am staying alone in a city where there is no one I can relate with is proving to be far more difficult than I initially thought it would be. But is this the reason why I am blogging?? No.  I would prefer to play a game of crazy taxi in Face book than writing some s#$t in the Internet.

I have been reading stuff in the Internet about the victorious Team India returning from Down Under and how Mahendra Singh Dhoni inspired a bunch of tyro's to glory.  That apart I could see few people praising the Indian captain far too much (most common in India and Indian cricket) . The fact that I could not digest is that a few respectable critics  hail Dhoni as a  great finisher of games and are also talking about how he copes with the pressure cooker situation and the way he wins matches with suave and grace, even better than his predecessor, who the same people say relinquished captaincy cos he wasn't strong enough mentally and  couldn't bat well. This is absolutely ridiculous and unwarranted.

It leads to two questions

 Is Dhoni a better captain than Rahul Dravid?

I feel we are drawing early conclusions about Dhoni's captaincy and are hailing him as the next big thing to Indian cricket after S.R.Tendulkar. I just want all of you to remember that we made rapid strides under Dravid in his first season as captain in the aftermath of Ganguly era. In fact we even made a record for winning 16 consecutive times chasing. But I guess there's a lot more time before we answer this question and even debate about it.

The second one is even more appalling;

Is Dhoni a better player or finisher(Test/ One Day...I don't consider Twenty20 as cricket) than the man regarded as The Great Wall of Indian cricket?

This one is synonymous to asking if Himesh Reshamiya is better than A.R.Rahman. Himesh Reshamiya is no doubt a great talent but would he match the greatest of them all-The Mozart of South Asia who has been churning tunes with his keybord  giving us classic after classic for more than a decade(Roja to Jodha Akbar).

Similarly Dhoni, who according to me has played few match winning innings and fewer under pressure,  can and will never become a Rahul Dravid. Don't get me wrong, Dhoni is a good player with excellent temperament but that does not make him a Dravid or Tendulkar, who have and are playing with doggy ruthless determination of a Muhammad Ali and  the fineese of Federer.

Dravid has sculptured many match winning innings and bailed India out of trouble,  with his bat using it like a paint brush few times and like chisel and saw innumerable number of times. I would not dwell into the statistics here as almost all Dravid's masterpieces are etched in the memories of everyone and more importantly in the folklore of Indian cricket. People say Dhoni is flamboyant, stylish, suave, urbane. Does this make him a better player than Dravid? The qualities mentioned here are more needed for becoming the next Jamed Bond but definately not for a great cricket batsman. If these were the characteristics of  a great player then wouldn't Mark Waugh have been 13584297 times better than that Stephen Rodger Waugh whom every former and current player regard highly as batsman and as a captain?

Give Dhoni his due, he deserves it but at the same time don't tarnish the greatness of Dravid. Its a cliche that Dravid has been the pillar of strength around which the Indian cricket has renovated itself after it's dismal 90's. Dravid is the like 510hp, 9000rpm, V8 engine of the F340 Scuderia. People looking at it will never admire the Ferrari for its power but for the sleek, posh scarlet red exterior finish, as we admire Dhoni the brand more than Dhoni the cricketer and get confused between them both.

Just answer this and you can come to a conclusion about the Dravid-Dhoni debate.

 Can Slim Shady be ever better the 5Th symphony?

Did I label Dravid as Beethoven and Dhoni as Eminem?

U Bet...

PS: Inspiration have been drawn from the style of writing of Nirmal Shekar and Brain Glanville of Sportstar.