Don't give excessive praise

Presently, all sorts of superlatives are being showered on Greg Chappell and Rahul Dravid for winning the recent 7-match ODI series with Sri Lanka by a margin of 6-1. It is only fair that the kudos should go to the captain when the team wins, because he is at the receiving end when the team loses. But there should be some rationale to both the blame-game and praise.

I think that India won the series because of the simultaneous peaking of all the Indian batsmen (including the newcomers), a simultaneous plunge in form of all the top Sri Lankan batsmen and a quantum jump in Indian fielding. While Indian bowlers appear to have bowled well, the form of Sri Lanka's top batsmen plunged down so steeply that the Indian bowling, which was not known to be very penetrative, suddenly looked lethal.

As regards Rahul Dravid, there is no doubt that he is the mainstay of Indian batting, but as far as his captaincy is concerned, I think it is premature to speak so highly so early in his career. May be the absence of negative aspects of Ganguly's captaincy, brought out by Greg Chappell in his "confidential" e- mail to BCCI, helped?

No coach can rejuvenate a team to win an ODI series by a 6-1 margin against the very team that trounced them by the margin of 0-3 in the previous 3-match ODI series within a period of some two months. Greg Chappell has just started his job and it will be at least one year before his hand can be perceived in the new "Team India". So the praise being showered on Chappell should be withheld for the time being.

K. B. KALE, Jakarta