Rahul Dravid steps down as Indian Captain

Rahul Dravid photo courtesy of Flickr and Rajaram S

The pressures that go with captaining the Indian cricket team are enormous. And it has just taken it’s toll on ‘The Wall’, Rahul Dravid.

In a move that surprised everybody, Dravid stepped down as Indian captain today from both forms of the game. The move is to enable him to focus on his batting. The BBC quoted him as saying, “I enjoyed the captaincy, I loved it, but it can get tough after a while and some of the enjoyment can go away. So, I thought it was the right time to step aside.”

According to the BCCI “Rahul Dravid met Sharad Pawar (the Indian Board President) at Delhi on September 13 and expressed his desire to step down as the captain of the Indian team and requested that he should not be considered for the job from the ensuing Australia series.”

The 33-year-old Dravid assured that he would extend full co-operation to his successor and contribute as a batsman and senior player, the statement added.

BCCI president Sharad Pawar said he has forwarded Dravid’s resignation to the Board.”

The big question now of course is, who will captain India going forward?

In my mind, the contenders are:

Mahendra Singh Dhoni - the current India 20 20 captain. However he is quite inexperienced in Test Cricket. Wearing the gloves, looking after his batting and undertaking the captaincy would be too large a burden.

The other two options are Sachin Tendulkar and dare I say it, Sourav Ganguly once again. Purely looking at the series coming up, against Pakistan and Australia, either of the two would be the best for the job - if they want to do it.

Sachin’s batting did suffer when he was captain, as did Ganguly’s. However Ganguly has a very good captaincy record.

It will be interesting to see which way the board goes.

Stay tuned for more on this….