Bye bye Captain

Perhaps the best manifestation of the kind of pressure International cricketers are under is by the curious condition of Mark Trescothick.

Mark Trescothick, if reports are to be believed, suffers from stress induced clinical depression. He turns into a Manager's nightmare on match eves and this has forced him to pull out of two series.

And he's British. Representing a country till year before last year's Ashes where cricket was falling in popularity like Europe's birth rate. This is a country where cricketers can go and have ice-creams with their girlfriends at the local shop. Everyone's watching the footballers. Pressure? What pressure?

How mentally strong or rather thick skinned a person needs to be in order to be a member of the Indian or Pakistani cricket team, one can only imagine..

Many people feel that just because cricketers make so much money they can take a crap on them as and when they feel like. As if years of hard work and the risk of coming through a hopelessly over-bureaucratized system means nothing. Tendulkar is a star because we the Indian people say he is. And abusing his mother, calling his wife ugly and his kids retards when he lets us down is adequately fair compensation for his Ferrari.

Nobody, except his ugly wife maybe, will know why Dravid quit the captaincy.

That's probably because there are so many reasons one can ascribe to it! Let us go through them:

1. Over criticism in the media/selectors.
2. Sharad Pawar's bad breath
3. Internal politics in the team (apparently Sachin and Ganguly have formed an axis against him)
4. Dipping batting form in Tests.
5. Impotency, nausea and dizziness.
6. Inability to distinguish between colours.
7. Missing Greg Chappel.
8. Silent protest over the Sethu Samundaram project
9. Solidarity with the exclusion of Manoj Tiwari for the Twenty20 team.
10. Dhoni refusing to get a haircut.
11. Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Theiry Henry advised him to do so sneakily on the set of the Gilette ad.

Dravid leaves behind a strange legacy. History will remember him as the Captain under whom we won a Test series in England, a Test match in South Africa and some stuff in the West Indies. We will also remember him as the person who presided over that World Cup first round exit.

I was quite warming up to him. I think his batting during the ODI's in England was exceptional.

On the other hand looking back, he seemed a guy a little isolated and he made biting remarks about the media showing his otherwise unflappable calm.

Well, being the Indian captain is a thankless job and we must all thank Dravid for doing his best.

P.S. The Indian team under Dhoni seems to be having a blast at the Twenty20 world cup. How long he can continue in his easy way before we all get to him.. we shall have to see..