Before meeting me, my wife was a cricket-obsessed nerd, and one day when she was trawling the puke-infested gutters of the interweb, she found her way to my cricket site, cricketwithballs. The piece she read was after a drunken day at the MCG, where I wrote about a torturous innings when Rahul Dravid made three ones off a trillion deliveries, while being dropped 48 times.
Dravid had batted like a man who had just been gelded. It was ugly to watch, and the fact that a batsman like that could be given a Bronx cheer for finally getting off the mark was horrible.
If Dravid was my dog, I’d have taken him out to the country, and taken a shovel as well.
I was pissed off he was opening, I was pissed off he was doing it badly, and mostly I was pissed off that I had to see him like this. To see him like this just left me cold.
But it wasn’t the first time Dravid had dragged his carcass around the crease like this. These were the dark days for Dravid, when he was more than a corpse with pads on, he was a fully kitted-up cadaver. Runs had become sparse and painful for Dravid. On one other occasion when Dravid had struggled in the UK, my future wife had been there, and lived the same sort of horror I had.
Seeing my words about Dravid meant she wrote a comment, and we bonded over seeing Dravid at his worst and wishing we hadn’t. Later on we’d get married and she’d slip a ring on my left hand, which is very similar to my right hand, which, years later, shook Dravid’s right hand.
Our wedding was at The Oval, the place of Dravid’s last overseas Test century. At the reception the tables were named after cricket grounds. One was the MCG, and we used a photo of Dravid facing a throw-down there. The picture was taken only a couple of days before my wife wrote that comment.
Rahul Dravid is not my favourite cricketer. He’s not the cricketer I get the most enjoyment from. I know other cricketers far better personally. It might even seem to some that I can only remember the bad days of Dravid’s career. And I suppose I do. But I don’t need to be the one writing about how great a player he was, I’m the one who writes about how this stoic Test champion changed my life by his very existence. And for that, and his forward defence, I say, thank you, Rahul.
Jarrod Kimber is the author of the cricketwithballs blog. On ESPNcricinfo, he writes the Cricket Sadist Hour blog and is one of the Two Chucks on the video show of the same name
[ 24 ]
The money moment
SAMIR CHOPRA
In January 2011 I travelled to Bangalore to meet Rahul Dravid and interview him for the book I was then writing. I intended to write on the changing face of modern cricket, on its response to the introduction of the franchise into a nation-based game, on the challenges Test cricket faced, and on the effects of media and technology on the game. When I thought of which Indian cricketers I would most like to talk to, Dravid’s name suggested itself as an obvious choice.
Shortly after I received word that I should go ahead and contact Rahul, I called and spoke briefly with him on the phone. He was unfailingly courteous and helpful, providing detailed directions to his house, even solicitously inquiring whether I knew my way about Bangalore (I didn’t, but assured him that I would be just fine).
I arrived at his house on time, was shown in, and soon our conversation started. Dravid was dressed casually and conducted himself with a polite, relaxed informality that put me instantly at ease, and prompted me to ask all the questions I wanted to. Mrs Dravid joined us for a few minutes, brought us tea, asked me a few questions about my background, and then left to take care of their boys.
As I talked to Dravid, a slight sense of unreality pervaded the proceedings. This man simply did not have the airs of a sporting superstar, someone who was rich and famous and hobnobbed with other cricketing superstars (though he did sometimes casually refer to them by first name). I could have been talking to someone who was a keen fan of cricket rather than a Test great and a former India captain. At times I had to keep reminding myself that this was Rahul Dravid. Of course, the quality, sharpness, and sometimes bluntness of his observations on cricket, the level of cricketing knowledge on display, and the insights that only someone on the inside of the game could have, reminded me that I was talking to a person located at a very particular focal point of international cricket.
And then, it happened. The money moment, so to speak.
As we talked about the transition from first-class cricket to Test cricket, from Test cricket to one-day games and T20, Dravid said, “My attitude towards batting was simple: the bowler had to earn my wicket. I told myself that I had to bat at least 30 overs in a Test. If I didn’t do that, I had failed. I would do it one way or the other.”
As he said this, suddenly his expression changed. The smiling, casual, relaxed demeanour that he had assumed till that point in the conversation was gone. His face hardened, the lines on his visage tautened. I stared at him, a lump now present in my throat, as I felt a slight chill run up my spine.
At that moment I realised I was in the presence of 10,000 Test runs, of umpteen thousands of deliveries faced, resisted and scored off. I was in the presence of a man who had squared up to, among others, Ambrose, Bishop, McGrath, Walsh, Akram, Steyn, Donald, Waqar – bowlers who, quite frankly, would induce in me trouser-soiling, spit-drying fear. At that moment the friendly mask slipped, just for a second, and I saw the steel and the grit that had made so many of India’s greatest Test wins possible.
And then we were back to being chatty about modern cricket, the big paychecks in the IPL, and the new aspirations of young Indian cricketers.
Our conversation lasted some four hours. At the end of it Dravid drove me to the entrance of the residential estate where his house was located, so that I could hail a cab. He wished me luck with my writing and was then gone.
While I remain grateful that he took the time to speak so frankly and voluminously to an utter stranger, I remain even more appreciative that he let me see, just for a brief moment, right into the heart of a true champion. It is the closest I have ever come to knowing what goes into the making of a great cricketer.
Samir Chopra lives in Brooklyn and teaches Philosophy at the City University of New York. He writes the blog The Pitch (on ESPNcricinfo), where this piece was first published on March 9, 2012, and runs a couple of others – Eye on Cricket and samirchopra.com
[ 25 ]
Start as you mean to go on
FAZAL KHALEEL
I first met Rahul at St Anthony’s Boys Primary School in Bangalore but only got to know him better when we moved to St Joseph’s High School in class four.
Even at that age he was serious – a little different from the others. I see the same qualities in his older son, Samit, who has the same ability to switch on and off easily. These qualities helped Rahul through his cricketing life, to get out of difficult situations and to handle easy ones well.
He paid attention to detail, especially the basics. If his form was not good he would go back to shadow-practice – to the hanging ball. When correcting our mistakes, our coach, Keki Tarapore, would tell us that if the bat did not come down straight, the ball would travel at an angle. Rahul never forgot the instruction.
Interestingly, he never made any changes to his basic cricket or in his approach to the game. Right from his school cricket days, he has played the same way. Playing in the V came naturally to him and he never altered it.
As a room-mate, Rahul was difficult as well as easy to share with. He wanted a zen-like atmosphere in the room – everything peaceful and calm. He was quiet and meditative, would not watch TV much; he read books instead. He didn’t seem to realise that the rest of us were normal human beings who wanted to make noise. He had his set routines and rituals, even in those days. He would do breathing exercises and clean his nostrils using the ancient practice of Jalneti. It was very boring, but in hindsight I wish I had done the same. Perhaps then I might have gradu
ated to a higher level of cricket too.
Rahul set the bar high for himself. Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath were his heroes, and while he may not admit it, he tried to model his game on Gavaskar’s. I remember during a physics lesson in class six or seven, while the teacher was explaining how specific gravity is equal to relative density, Rahul quipped: “SG = RD. Sunil Gavaskar = Rahul Dravid.”
In 1987, we were in Nagpur for an age-group inter-zone tournament. A few of us were standing by a juice stall in the hostel’s atrium when a curly-haired short guy walked up and asked for Mujib-ur-Rehman, a Tamil Nadu batsman. We told him Rehman was over-age and was not part of the squad. When he left, Rahul said: “This guy is a good player. He is going to play for India.” I laughed, but the next day that kid got a big hundred for West Zone. It was Sachin Tendulkar; inside two years he had made his debut for India.
Rahul knew very early in life what he wanted. And that came from his upbringing. His parents equipped him with solid middle-class values that helped him move seamlessly from one level to the other.
His ability to look at the big picture at a young age was amazing. When we were concentrating on getting into Under-19 sides, he was already thinking of excelling in the Ranji Trophy – a leap I could not even comprehend at that age. After he made his Ranji debut he told me it was just the beginning and that he now wanted to play for India. After he returned from his debut Test series in England, he said he wanted to be remembered as one of the greatest to have played for India, not some also-ran.
As the years went by, his determination to excel only grew, which meant he was often harsh on himself. In the 1996-97 season he was playing in the Ranji Trophy for Karnataka after being dropped from the India squad for the ODI series against Sri Lanka, supposedly because of his defensive style of batting. We were playing at the RSI grounds in central Bangalore, where our dressing room was a makeshift tent. During lunch one day, a spectator walked up and started to criticise Rahul’s batting and slow scoring. The man kept going at him but Rahul sat there quietly with his pads on. After a while I half stood up to give the man a piece of my mind, but Rahul pulled me back down. Once he left, Rahul said the man had made a couple of good points, and that it was good to take in constructive criticism. The more successful Rahul became, the more humble he got.
But while he was patient, he’d speak his mind if he wasn’t happy with your work. In 1998, Karnataka travelled to play Hyderabad in the Ranji semi-final in Secunderabad. We were desperate to do well that season and the pressure was on. Half an hour before the end of the second day’s play I was batting with Rahul. He warned me not to get distracted while Hyderabad’s veteran spinners, Venkatapathy Raju and Kanwaljit Singh, were bowling together, and said to play out the day. Coming from a man who can play out days for a run, it was hardly surprising. Unfortunately I got an inside edge onto my pads and was caught at silly point.
Later Rahul gave me some stick for the dismissal, which I did not like at the time. I told my room-mate, J Arun Kumar, that till we won the match I wouldn’t talk to Rahul. The match went down to the wire and I scored a crucial 51 in our successful chase. Then we patched up and had a good laugh. In a way, Rahul letting me have it spurred me to do better.
He always inspired youngsters with his leadership qualities and his performances. He is the perfect example of “practise what you preach”. He would never ask you to do anything he would not do himself. The seriousness with which he played affected the various dressing rooms he was in – India, Karnataka, and even the corporate club, India Cements, that he played for in the Chennai leagues. People always had immense respect for him, and it was difficult at times for me to decide who was better: Rahul Dravid the human being or Rahul Dravid the cricketer.
Fazal Khaleel, a former Karnataka first-class cricketer who played age-group cricket and Ranji Trophy with Rahul Dravid, spoke to ESPNcricinfo assistant editor Nagraj Gollapudi
Grassy wicket? No problem. Baby Rahul with his parents
An early start: Dravid wields a bat nearly as big as himself
In his India Under-19 days
The elaborate forward defence, bat safely behind pad,
on show in a Ranji Trophy match against Tamil Nadu in 1991
The Bangalore boys: Dravid, Venkatesh Prasad, Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble, flanked by offspinner Rangarao Ananth on the left and former England batsman Colin Cowdrey on the right, at the Karnataka State Cricket Association
Class of 1996: Dravid announced his arrival in Test cricket with 95 at Lord’s
Batting during his first-innings 190 in Hamilton in 1999. He made a hundred in the second innings as well.
Dropped for his slow scoring before the 1999 World Cup, he began the tournament with a 129-ball 145 in Taunton, and finished it as the highest run-getter
In Kent colours, 2000: Dravid said his six-month stint with the county helped him better understand his game and himself
The duet: some of Dravid’s finest efforts came with VVS Laxman at the other end – most famously his 180 in Kolkata in 2001
In 2002 he mastered the swing and seam of Headingley, making a teeth-gritted 148 to set the platform for India’s first Test win in England in 16 years
Solo again: in Adelaide in 2003, his 233 and 72 not out gave India their first Test win in Australia since 1981
Dravid carried on in the 2003 World Cup where he had left off in 1999, scoring 318 runs. He also kept wicket, effecting 16 dismissals
Colour-coordinated with wife Vijeeta on holiday in Santorini, Greece, 2004
With sons Samit (above) and Anvay
His highest score, the 270 in Rawalpindi in 2004, was his fourth double-hundred in 20 months. India won the Test by an innings, and the series 2-1
Dravid won the first ICC awards for Player of the Year and Test Player of the Year, in September 2004, for over 2000 runs across both formats
Physio’s delight: Dravid rarely flunked the dreaded skin-folds test, and remained in peak fitness till the end of his career
Kingston, 2006 was another classic of standalone defiance. Dravid’s 81 and 68 won India their first series in the West Indies in 35 years
One of the toughest days of his captaincy came when India left the 2007 World Cup in the first round after defeats to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
The fab four: Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar, on the 2007 tour of England
His captaincy career ended on a high, with a win in the Pataudi Trophy – India’s first series victory in England since 1986
On his third trip to Australia, in 2007-08, Dravid broke out of a run of poor form to score a crucial 93 in India’s famous win in Perth
In 2008, he became the sixth batsman to have scored 10,000 Test runs. Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar are the only other Indians to have gone past the milestone
Long one of India’s best specialist slip catchers, in December 2010, Dravid broke the world record, taking his 200th catch in Tests
If it’s June, it must be Jamaica: another win in Kingston for India, thanks largely to Dravid’s second-innings 112
Fifteen years after his debut at Lord’s, Dravid returned to England for one of his finest series, with three Test hundreds and an average of 76
Old-school Test batsman or not, Dravid didn’t fare too badly in the IPL. In 2012 he captained Rajasthan Royals in the tournament.
[ 26 ]
My husband the perfectionist
VIJEETA DRAVID
I’ve been married to Rahul for almost nine years now and we have always been very private people. This is not meant to be a song of praise for him on his retirement; I’m writing this to provide an insight into the role cricket has played in his life, and to take that in for myself at the end of hi
s 16-year international career. How the game has made him who he is and how he has been able to get the most out of his time in international cricket.
The last 12 months of his career were very special for us for more than the runs or centuries Rahul scored. After the 2010-11 tour of South Africa, our older son, Samit, suddenly developed a huge interest in cricket. With him watching his father score his centuries in England in 2011, it was as if in the last year of his career Rahul had found his best audience.
I was with the boys at Old Trafford when Rahul played his first (and last) T20 international, and we also travelled to every match of the one-day series. During the ODI series, we went into the Lord’s dressing room and showed Samit and Anvay their baba’s name on the Lord’s honours board. It was a huge thrill for both boys to see Rahul play live in front of so many people, to see him at the “work” that kept him away from them for months.
Rahul and I will always treasure that memory. Our families had been friends for years. I have two older brothers, which meant I did follow cricket – but only one-day cricket, I must confess. I didn’t have a clue about Test cricket and was too caught up in my post-graduate studies in medicine to find out. What I did know was that Rahul had been picked to play for India, and later that he was doing well.
Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel Page 14