One of those things money can't buy.

A day will come, when Rahul Sharad Dravid will issue a prepared statement, and say good bye to test cricket in as understated a manner as someone of his stature can. It may not generate enough headlines, and FB status messages, and we might trash a few teams here and there too, without missing him much.

Then, one dark/dank morning, on a seaming pitch at 10/1, the captain of India (and the rest of us) will suddenly realize that there is no longer a Dravid to send to war. And thus we shall realize what we would have lost.

As much as I enjoy the flamboyance, the flair and the elegance of the rest of the Indian batting order, there is even today a satisfaction, an assurance that all will be well, when one sees that Britannia willow come down, ball after testing ball, and keep it out, or leave it with such assurance. That upright pull shot, and that cover drive to a swinging ball are as beautiful shots as you will ever see.

Even today, for me, the measure of the toughness of a pitch/situation is how an in-form Dravid is handling it. If he can't, well, who on earth can? If a good ball gets Dravid, well it could have gotten anyone else. It is mark of respect for the bowler.

While we often divide cricket fans in India by either being a SRT fanatic or a Dravid fanatic, I think (and have always done so) that each has had the career that he has had because of the other. There is a reason that it is most prolific batting partnership in the history of the game, and there is no one else even close. And while it is true that SRT will always have a special place my heart, the way I look at it is this way:

SRT was a born genius, something magical, and probably un-attainable by most of us. Dravid is an inspiration - he showed you that with a little bit of talent, and lots (and some more) of hard work, you can still be the best in the world. SRT might be on the wall poster, but Dravid is what I will identify with. And while Dravid doesn't generate anywhere near as much hysteria as SRT, it is what suits his persona perfectly. Imagine all that hype around Dravid. It just wouldn't be Dravid anymore :)

I will not say 'Respect' today. For me, he had that many moons ago. I will just say - savor it. It is priceless. There indeed are somethings money can't buy. The Indian Test Batting Line Up is definitely one of them, and at numbers three and four, we have probably the greatest 1-2 punch ever, and the beauty is, they are at such stages in their careers, that they could score 10 consecutive ducks, and nothing would ever change. Amen.

The Cup of Joy Overflows

Finally, the day which a billion of us had dreamt up for so many years - almost to the point of it becoming an obsession - has come!

As discussed countless times with DK, Dewan, Jha, Akshat, Captain Desai, HVJ, Dadu, Gumboo, Gattu and many others - there is only one thing we most definitely wanted to see in 2011 - and for a change, we got it!

Needless to say, there is not much I have been able to think of over the past 12 hours. Considering that I never even got close to playing for India, and I still cannot get over it, imagine how the players feel!

A few random musings overflowing from my cup of happiness :)

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• Power of Team India: It stopped traffic on the roads of Dubai. In over 16+ years in this country, I have never seen anything even remotely close to this. If you wanted to know how many Indians lived here, yesterday night 10 pm was a good time to check. People started dancing on the roads, blocking cars, blowing horns. Heck, one guy even dunked people (XL-style) from his balcony (ala Chhatri :P).Team India might be hype redefined, but do not for once under-estimate it's power to touch lives. Bleeding Blue, and proud of it! 
• In all this hoopla about pressure and achievement, we strangely never discuss how the players must have felt. Many Indian fans have made the assumption that the player is on a job -  to win the match 'for us'. If you ever played sport at even gully level, and have some amount of self-respect, you should know how it feels to lose a game.Also, regardless of what the fans feels, our players are people who not only have highest order of cricket skills, but also those who have had the mental strength to fight as well. And while the scars of the match-fixing scandal still run deep in some places, may be it is time we also gave our players some respect. Why should we assume that he wins only for the fans? As a player, even these guys may not win another WC in their lives, but that probably never crossed a single mind yesterday night. Yes, they get the money, but do Virat, Guatam, Viru, MS, Yuvi, Zaheer, Bhajji and friends (For obvious reasons, SRT is excluded) look like they would be happy getting paid and a silver medal? Answer that honestly from what you have seen, and not what you have heard about match-fixing claims that never get substantiated (like bookies claims that Pakistan was winning the semi!)It is time we grew up as sports fans. 
• Ravi Shastri was again there when MSD hit 'that' six. Lucky Bastard. 
• Poonam Pandey entrered the Guinness Book of World Records for causing the highest number of KLPDs at any one time. 650 million men is a big number. 
• India beat all former WC champions it faced, which were the last four matches it played - WI, Aus, Pak and SL. 
• Sri Lanka could not beat any former WC champion it faced. Lost to Pak and India, and the match against Aus was washed out. Their wins came against NZ (twice) and England. Not the greatest of oppositions in the sub-continent for them. 
• India outfielded SL. How often has that happened? As Viru said, '38-years old SRT throwing himself on the boundary'. But even more surprising were the efforts of Zaheer and Munaf.Make no mistake, this effort does not come by randomly. It just proves Dhoni's excellence at extracting more than 100% from every member. And one cannot just say that it happened because it was a WC final. SL were also playing the same game, yet their fielding standards actually dropped.Another smart thing that MSD did was to ensure we peaked at the right time. Except Aus in 2007 (and to an extend SL in 1996), hardly any in any sport has won the WC at a canter. 
• Yuvraj's fielding told you he was not going back home without the WC. With Yuvi at point, Raina at cover, and Kohli at Extra, India's offside cordon rivalled any in the world. And with younger players bound to come in, it can only get better. 
• It  is time we evaluate the role and performance of Bhajji. Yes, we won the WC, and he got Umar Akmal, Afridi and Dilshan in the big games, but he resembles Ashley Giles more than Graeme Swann.Also consider that we now measure India's best spinners against English spinners as yardstick. I am sure we have better to offer. Ojha and Ashwin should definitely be given a look in. 
• Piyush Chawla must have been the luckiest WC winner ever. Might as well have taken an injured Praveen and given the medal to him. Possibly the only purpose Piyush served was to make others feel that if he can play in the WC, then so can anyone else. 
• SRT not playing after 200* was indeed a blessing (and possibly planned) to give real-pressure exposure to the likes of Virat and Raina. It also helped in a way that Sehwag was often injured. 
• While Viru's impact may not have been massive, one cannot overstate the importance of his assault on Umar Gul in the semis. One, it dented Gul. Two, it gave India a massive headstart. And when you saw how people batted on it in the 94 overs after Sehwag was dismissed, only then the importance of that knock sinks in. 
• SRT does not finish as the higest scorer. He has done it twice before, but failed to get the winner's medal. It was fitting that when he finally won the cup, it was with a team that deserved him as much as he deserved that team. 
• MSD might be lucky to have such great players around him, but along with that, he is also smart, a great motivator, grounded, calm, courageous and has balls of steel. Not a bad man to captain India I would say! Eventually, who cares what he is - only two India Cricket Captains can claim to have won a WC of any kind - and he is one of them! 
• In some way, most of the current Indian team is no different from us fans in one aspect - they wanted to win it for SRT. How often does the entire team say this in unision? I think a reason could be the time gap between when SRT started playing and when the rest did. The closest would be Bhajji (around 1998), 9 years on from SRT debut, with the last one being Ashwin (2009?), around 2 decades after SRT's debut!Basically, these guys also grew up idolising SRT much like the rest of us, and so harbour almost the same feelings. 
• And while India has produced many great players in the past 28 years, there are a few amongst them who also probably (or surely) deserved some piece of this win, who have laid the foundations, brick-by-brick, in getting us here. My heart goes out to (in random order) - Ganguly, Kumble, Dravid, Srinath and VVS. (Note: VVS was never a great one-day player, but then good performances in one format do rub-off on the other formats too) 

Thank you Team India. For winning it while the great man was still there. For allowing him 'THAT' smile. For letting us have this heaven.