Rahul Dravid: Playing beyond the prize

The boy stood on the burning deckWhence all but he had fled;The flame that lit the battle’s wreckShone round him o’er the dead.Yet beautiful and bright he stood,As born to rule the storm;A creature of heroic blood,A proud, though childlike form.

- Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans

The burning deck laid low beneath the 12-year-old Casabianca’s feet, almost in servitude to the boy’s unfazed visage in the face of an English invasion going gory. The English sailors, battling an adrenaline rush gained by the macabre sights on offer, stood stupefied watching the boy manfully perish to the inferno.

Centuries later, Father Time, perched proudly atop the Lord’s Cricket Ground, watched a 23-year-old score one of the most pristine 95 runs ever scored in the history of Test cricket. It was rather unfair then, that some years later this very 23-year-old came to be labelled something as dull as “the Wall” when everything about him was as beautiful as the beleaguered Casabianca.

He made friends with adversity, looked danger in the eye, and as Mrs. Felicia would have agreed, he was definitely a creature of heroic blood. He was all this and much more to Indian cricket and went by the name Rahul Sharad Dravid.

Dravid braved several burning decks during a breathtaking career, perishing almost never and braving invasions of all shades. While Casabianca brandished his brand of beauty atop the blazing ship in his own inimitable way, Dravid’s batsmanship over the years guffawed at the frailty of opposition aimed at him.

Deep down, even though we sobbed at yet another Indian batting collapse in the making, we lightened up at the thought of “the Wall” packing a punch, with the punctuality of a sunrise. His formative years in international cricket saw him transitioning from a slow starter to a stroke-maker most imperious. In those early years, Rahul Dravid a.k.a. ‘Jammy’ was hated by male fans for his “slow” scoring and loved by female fans for his good looks.

Time has a funny way of dislodging opinions though. While the female fans kept burgeoning in number, the men too joined the fold after realisation dawned upon them. Dravid had time and again proven to be the linchpin of famous Indian Test and ODI victories. The arduous 180 against the all-conquering Steve Waugh-led Aussies in the epochal 2001 Kolkata Test, made after wading through cramps, endless masseur sessions, trademark Aussie “chin-music” and the bulldozing weight of expectations, sits pretty in everyone’s memory.

Rahul Dravid manned the number 3 spot in the Indian batting line-up with distinction. Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position, and all of them were made with skill hardly seen before. For the uninitiated, the No. 3 spot is the standard against which all willow-wielders are evaluated. And Dravid could be the standard himself in the modern era.

It is said of him that he could walk on broken glass if his team ever wanted him to. To tell the truth, he gladly donned the wicket-keeping gloves for the ODI team ahead of the 2003 World Cup in a bid by the team management to accommodate an extra batsman.

This move was a masterstroke and capped India’s stupendous run to the finals of that tournament. His clinical fitness levels ensured he easily stepped up to the rigours of keeping and then turned out impressively at what his forte is: scoring big.

Whenever the Indian cricket team would set foot abroad in the early 2000s, plaintive-looking faces would be the norm and Jammy would be the go-to man for everyone on the field. His 76 against a Shane Bond-led bowling unit in the 2002 Wellington Test was a blockbuster in the eyes of the cricketing fraternity.

While every other ribcage in the team became a sitting duck on a minefield of a pitch, Dravid’s ribs bristled with skill and temerity. He went about hooking and pulling with astounding ease. His ravishing square cuts gave one the idea that this man loved the scent of battle. His was an in-your-face innings essayed rather bluntly, with the message loud and clear.

His debut World Cup in 1999 saw him finish as the highest run-getter in the tournament with 461 runs. The run machine that he was, Dravid had an alarming appetite for cricketing prose too. He had read inspiring tales of illustrious No. 3 batsmen before him and reckoned later that they went a long way in shaping his game for the better. Everything about him was measured and precise.

Dravid recounted the time when he tugged open the gates leading to the centre on his Test debut at Lord’s. While he was walking out to bat, he swore to himself not to be just another India cap holder. He wanted to be the best, and the rest is delightful history.

Dravid punching the air after guiding India to a famous win in Adelaide

John Wright happily recalls Dravid’s work ethic in his book Indian Summers. Dravid would arrive hours before actual team practice sessions began and would be the last one to leave. While his comrades may be having a good time the night before a game, he would hit the bed early to be ready for the game the next day. All of a sudden, the 36 Test hundreds he amassed brim with the tenacity and penance he put into all of them.

The honours, accolades and achievements apart, Dravid constantly stresses the important to play beyond the prize and enjoy the game. He believes the most joyous moment of his life was his rendezvous with the ball. The time just before the bowler doubled up to deliver the cherry; the time when all that existed before him was the ball, the bat and he himself.

Apart from enthralling spectators and fans across all strata of society, Dravid has been an absolute delight for statisticians too. He once scored four consecutive Test centuries, all of them in conditions very alien to the other. He also smashed five double hundreds, each one exceeding the previous in skill and magnitude, with his epic 270 being his career-best against Pakistan.

He holds the distinction for the highest percentage of runs scored in matches won under a single captain, where the captain has won more than 20 Tests. In the 21 Test matches that India won with Ganguly at the helm, Dravid scored 2,571 runs at an average of 102.84, with nine hundreds, including three double centuries, and ten fifties to boot, in just 32 innings. He contributed nearly 23% of the total runs scored by India in those 21 matches.

That implies Dravid scored approximately one run out of every four runs India scored!

While Dravid would have his own musings on his best match-winning knocks, I would personally make him concede, on gun-point if need be, that his 233 and unbeaten 72 in the 2003 Adelaide Test would be the magnum opus of his oeuvre of match-winning endeavours. That performance came in the face of a potent Australian bowling attack, when every possible chip was down.

His after-match comments about the Adelaide Test moved everyone. He had said how thoughts about fighting hard and losing in agonisingly close contests in the past had become a nightmare for him.

He asserted that he didn’t want to be part of teary tales again and kept egging himself on in that Adelaide Test while chasing Australia’s 230. And when the cover drive off MacGill to effect the winning runs did come, Dravid punched the air in a rare show of emotion.

For all the brickbats he received for being ‘slow’ and defensive, Dravid’s 50 off 22 balls against the Kiwis is the second fastest fifty by an Indian in ODIs behind Ajit Agarkar. After that innings, Dravid fans were heard telling each other ‘I told you so’.

One of the biggest honours bestowed upon him was that of being the first non-Australian to be chosen to deliver the Bradman Oration Lecture a couple of years ago. The venue of the discourse was an Australian War Memorial. Dravid spoke of how soldiers had the highest calling as they lay down their lives in defending the country while cricketing contests are so easily labelled wars and battles. The real wars were fought by these sepoys, he believed. That’s Dravid for you, the proverbial nice guy!

And as Devendra Prabhudesai aptly went on to title his biography about him, Dravid was definitely “The nice guy who finished first!”