MR COOL
On the phone, before last month's one-day series in Kenya, in the middle of the conversation, Rahul Dravid said: "Watch Bharadwaj, he's good, man." It's met with a degree of skepticism, not because Vijay Bharadwaj looks like an earnest insurance salesman, but because Ranji Trophy scores (his average was 106.6 last season) mean little when Glenn McGrath is giving you the evil eye.

But the insurance salesman (actually a bank employee), who got 100 out of 100 in maths in Class X, is not a fudger of figures. In Kenya, his first tour abroad, he proved it. Not just with impressive scores, not just with his straight bat, but more with his never-fussed demeanour. Into the Test team already, Dravid would be pleased. After all, Bharadwaj says he wants to bat like him.