Aggression has a colourful meaning in Indian psyche. It has a cinematic connotation to it where a gun-slinging, grandiloquent showman dominates the rest. Suave and perceptive characters have often been viewed — even looked down upon — as unworldly and marked for failure.
Perhaps, the same yardstick has been applied when it comes to judging cricketers as well in India. No wonder then, Rahul Dravid had to spend his energy more in tackling the questions about his decision not to enforce the follow-on in the Oval Test than India winning a Test series in England after 21 years.
The number of years itself – 21— makes it an achievement to savour. Yet, many of us had preferred to exhaust countless hours on secondary issues like follow-on and margin of victory, forgetting that by electing to bat a second time Dravid eliminated — even if it was theoretical — the risk of losing.
A move that should have been termed sagacious — England skipper Michael Vaughan said he too would not have enforced the follow-on in a similar situation — was instead used to label Dravid as a captain with a negative mindset. A parallel could be drawn here with the above said hypothesis. Dravid too hinted at that when he spoke to Deccan Herald, a couple of days after the Oval Test.
"I hate the compartmentalisation of captains saying they are defensive or aggressive. But I guess that is what people do, and especially in India people tend to do that a lot. It is hard to pre-judge captains and I know sometimes people do that. At various times you can afford to be a positive captain depending upon the players that you have in the team.
"Sometimes you force yourself to be defensive as captain depending on the situation that you find yourself in. I don't think you can go around and say that you can captain in only one particular way. When I feel that I need to be a bit more pro-active I do that. There are times when I did that and there are times when I did not do that. That is what captaincy is all about," he said.
Perhaps, that prudent nature helped Dravid to keep his calm when the stormy debate on follow-on had raged on. "The goal was to win the series and we have achieved that and that is really important. I really don't understand what the fuss was all about. But that is part of the job being the captain of India. People agree with something and don't agree with something. I don't think they should be either. I don't take these things too seriously," he said.
Those words also suggest that Dravid is at ease with the burden of captaincy that can grow manifold in a country like India where every move of a skipper and his team is subjected to intense scrutiny. But the Bangalorean was unfazed with all that. "There are certain pressures in leading the country. It is not easy to keep away from them. If you have a lot of breaks in the middle then you can switch off. But playing all the time, something like in the circus all the time, it is difficult. I just try to switch off when I come back to the room. I don't really worry about the decision that I had made as a captain.”
"I fix certain time to think about cricket and try and switch off after that. It has always been a challenge. Some days I do it better than others. You have to realise the fact that there are going to be good days and bad days as captain. You have to accept that fact and it should keep you going."
Precious moments
That led Dravid to evaluate his year-and-a-half in the hot seat. There have been some precious moments like the big run in the one-dayers in the early part of his stewardship, a series win in the West Indies after three decades, while a calamitous South African tour and a premature exit from the World Cup constitute the bleaker ones.
When Dravid rated his tenure at the helm as enjoyable, it also showed the man's heart to swim past the heavy waves. "It's been really interesting. There is no doubt that there have been a few challenges as a player and a captain. But I enjoyed every experience and I learned from most of those experiences. I think the challenges continue and you have to try to keep enjoying them."
Two overseas series wins within a year might be enough for many to state that India have erased the tag of poor travellers, but for Dravid it is just the beginning.
"We can be proud of the series win, and it is important that we build from here and ensure that these things are not a rarity. It is something that we learn a few lessons from, then develop and implement them not for just now, but for the years to come."
“But I don't know if we ever will be able to put that tag away, probably some tags that put on to you will never go away. Things like 'we can't play fast bowling, we can't play on bouncy tracks will keep surfacing. Even if you score 664 at the Oval, the next time people will ask you the same question. India will always be viewed as poor travellers irrespective of what we do. You cannot do much about that and because there are some clichés which will never change."
Dravid rated the ability to change as an essential ingredient for the success of a captain. "As captain you have to vary according to the situation, condition, pitch. Captaincy varies on your strength and weaknesses, the players you have got, and their injury. I mean everything you need to take into account and adapt according to what you have."
Lack of runs
Amidst the euphoria surrounding the series win and his success as the skipper, Dravid might not have missed the point of a sedate series with the bat, especially considering the fact that England have been his happy hunting ground.
"It has been a tough series personally as a batsman. I had more success coming to England as a batsman in the past. But from a team perspective I have enjoyed this series more than the other two because we have ended up on the winning side.
“I guess there are two ways of looking at every thing.  But yes, I think personally I could not play the kind of knock that I would have liked to. I think these are part of the game and I just have to go, try and get better. Probably, try and get some runs in the one-day series and get back into good form."
Indeed, India will certainly require both Dravid the batsman and Dravid the captain more than ever in this season.