Two cricketers and a World Cup

Rahul Dravid and Jacob Oram come from different worlds. One is from a cricket crazy city(Bangalore) of a cricket crazy country and the other is from a country where cricket needs to compete with other sports for the top slot. In one country cricket is a religion and in the other, its a mere sport. But these two cricketers made news last week for reasons that are completely non-idiosyncratic.

Last week CNN-IBN interviewed Rahul Dravid. After the interview, quite a few eyebrows were raised among those who follow Indian cricket. Rest of the media picked it up and ran with the story, or a version of it. There was quite a bit of noise in the blogosphere as well. In the interview, Rahul Dravid simply did not say what people expected him to say. He simply refused to be told that he was the center of the world. He refused to take himself more seriously than he needed to. He refused to share the belief that all his life's hard work (and that of his teammates') culminates with World Cup 2007. All of it, while maintaining the typical composure and assertiveness. In that interview with CNN-IBN, a couple of things struck with me. First - "Its not modest, its just the way I feel about it" line. And then the "Life goes on after the World Cup" line. Quite uncharacteristic and gutsy for an Indian captain about to lead his team in the World Cup. Or for that matter, uncharacteristic for any captain from the sub-continent. With 2 weeks to go, the last thing the captain wants, is to sound as though winning the World Cup is less important than anything else - a n y t h i n g e l s e.

Around the same time, Jacob Oram was talking about amputating his finger in order to play the World Cup(Thank God he didn't have to and hopefully no Cricketer has to). Remember again that Jacob Oram has never had his effigy burnt. He will never have to see his house mobbed due to one bad performance. In his country unlike Rahul Dravids', cricket is simply not that big. But still he wanted to play the World Cup so badly that he was ready to go under the knife. Was it worth the prize ? Only Jacob can answer. Because, like Rahul Dravid, ONLY he knows the answer. Because, like Dravid, only he could measure his success.

Well, tale of two cricketers - each with a big heart.