Rahul Dravid: Playing beyond the prize

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!”