Yet, something went wrong in the last few months. Captaincy did not suit Rahul Dravid. He is a thinking man, and has a life of the intellect. For such a man, the second most important job in the country may have turned out to be too heavy a burden. One saw the man standing there in the slips, gnawing his nails; one saw the haunted look in his eyes, and one knew he was not enjoying the role. Ganguly’s style of captaincy was a cross between King Leonidas leading his 300 Spartans against the Persian hordes at Thermopylae and a streetfight at the OK Corral. Dravid as captain looked increasingly like a Prince of Denmark with serious existential doubts. Perhaps leading a bunch of boys2men from a variety of backgrounds, many of them unruly, and most of them extremely ambitious, egotistical and insecure is not the job for a decent normal man who doesn’t want to go out carousing with the boys but prefers to spend his evening curled up with Lance Armstrong’s autobiography.

And being a perfectionist wouldn’t have helped. I remember asking Dravid why he never wrote (anyone speaking to him would instantly be struck by his intelligence, articulation and widely read mind), and he replied: “Yes, I’ve thought of it many times, but then I read a piece by Scyld Berry or Christopher Martin-Jenkins and I think I’ll never be able to write as well as these guys, so what’s the point?” The man has never lacked courage, and to give up the captaincy of the Indian cricket team on his own required a very large amount of that quality; Dravid exhibited it for the nth time when he resigned. But the batting masterclass that he thought he would be able to reach again now that the captaincy was off his back has not yet opened its doors to him.

... contd.