Even though Rahul Dravid may not continue as India's captain, no one can deny his talent, achievements and — most important of all — character. I consider him perhaps one of the classiest cricketers ever. There have certainly been other cricketers in his era who have had more talent or have achieved more as cricketers and as captains, and yet somehow his greatest quality is that he is first and foremost a nice guy. Here is an example of Dravid being classy:

Press: Shouldn't some one stand up and take responsibility?
Dravid: We definitely do take the responsibility. I am not sitting here and trying to shirk responsibility. I am the first one to stand up and say that we should have done better, and it starts with me. I am not trying to put the responsibility on anyone. People are asking me what's the way forward and what do we do. I haven't really thought about stuff like that. Till about 24 hours ago, I truly believed that we will still be in this tournament. I didn't have the time to think what's ahead of us. But I am not trying to say I don't take any responsibility. I take full responsibility for the fact that we haven't progressed to the next round.(from his CricInfo interview)

In this age of spin, it is refreshing to see someone acknowledge where the buck stops. Once again, Rahul Dravid, you make Josephites around the world proud.

In line with popular reason if not popular (and commercial) emotion, India lost to Sri Lanka today in a Group B match. The Sri Lankans were their usual competent selves, and shrugged off a couple of early wickets to post a respectable total. In stark contrast, the Indian batting order — except for Dravid — crumbled in yet another exhibition of mental weakness. It was a perfect example of what Americans call "choking".

It was clear in the match today that the Indian bowling can perform respectably and yet the supposedly strong batsmen let it down time and again. Granted our bowling attack is not what I would call top-class, but our batting is way over-hyped. The sign of a good batting team is consistency, not sporadic outstanding performances. India's batsmen are certainly talented, yet there is no sign of grit and determination which so many teams show in their lower middle order. I wonder if we can ever build that up; do other teams get it from training, from the way their first-class cricket works, or is it something cultural? Until we figure that out, all the talent we can cull from a population of over a billion may be doomed to fail.

Realized I have not blogged since classes started back up this semester — that translates to about two months! I do have quite a few things to write about, just need some time to dedicate to writing. I am spending tonight poring over crufty C++ code, and slowly coming to the conclusion that undocumented object-oriented code may harder to understand than undocumented procedural code.