The travails of Rahul Dravid

A thousand gremlins seem to have inflicted the mind of Rahul Dravid, India's most reliable batsman over the past decade. The first casualty has been the attitude, which has become ultra-defensive to remind us of the days in the late 90s when he used to struggle to get the ball off the square. The next thing to suffer has been his footwork. This can be seen in the way he has been getting out in recent times, getting leg before or bowled while trying to play across the line. Another frequent manner in which he gets dismissed these days is when he goes leg before, getting caught on the crease to the incoming delivery. Now you would not expect a batsman of Rahul's class to get dismissed regularly playing across the line or half-cock. This is happening because the front foot which is normally mobile and enables transfer of weight easily is getting stuck in the crease with the effect that he has to play around it to execute his favourite on-drive. This leads to two things. One, because of the front foot being planted in the crease, the bat has to come down at a greater angle, probably from third slip or even gully, rather than first slip. Secondly, he tends to fall over while trying to execute the shot due to lack of balance. This ultimately leads to him missing more deliveries than usual and he gets bowled or leg before. Moreover, he has got into the habit of playing half-cock without going fully forward or fully backward getting trapped leg-before to the incoming delivery. This is more a direct fallout of the ultra-defensive mindset that he is in currently where he is looking to block even hittable deliveries. We all know Rahul has the mental strength to pull himself out of this rut. Lets hope it happens in Sydney.