Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel

by Chappell, Greg

  Now Dravid pulled Ponting to midwicket. Michael Slater – who had been all over Dravid in the last Test, abusing him because Dravid had dared question the legality of a catch – gave chase, kept the ball in, threw it back to Ponting, who conceded an overthrow. Dirty looks exchanged. Wheels coming off. Dravid ran all four. India effectively 132 for 4. A bread-and-butter couple off the pads followed. The dream of 17 straight wins was fast evaporating. Only one slip remained. Were they thinking of a draw now, to protect the lead?

  In the next over Dravid defended one, and it spun towards the stumps. He looked to chest it away, decided against it. He looked to kick it away, but the ball was too close to the stumps – he could have been hit-wicket. He chose to let it bounce a second time. It bounced about six inches from the stumps: he still couldn’t risk kicking it away; he let it be. The off stump stood. Eden Gardens heaved as one. The emblem on Dravid’s helmet had begun to come unstuck; it looked like it had come off a few more inches during the effort.

  Mark Waugh finally provided respite. Dravid took a wide half-volley and drove it wide of mid-on. He was finally dictating. Another on-drive. A pull. The lead was 150 now, and Dravid on 76. And again he was to be pulled back.

  Gillespie bowled a massive offcutter that hit him flush on the box. He hobbled through for a leg-bye, and as soon as he reached the crease he pulled out the box and went down. When he got up, he doubled over his bat. Andrew Leipus, the physio, came out, not for the last time. Minutes later Dravid put the box back in, and Eden cheered. His shirt was now wet enough to start clinging onto him. How long before cramps set in?

  Gillespie kept troubling him with the variable bounce, and his extra pace, that final snap of the shoulder. How beautiful his action, how harsh his luck. He put everything into it. He bowled cutters, he held the ball across the seam, he even reversed it for a while. Dravid kept moving forward to try to keep the low-bouncing balls out, but kept getting beaten once in a while. By drinks in the afternoon, Dravid had reached 84, two fewer than his previous best against Australia, and Laxman’s back began acting up. He almost hadn’t played this Test, because he had been “listing”, which means, in Wright’s words, “his shoulders and hips weren’t in line”. It is the body’s way to protect a damaged back. Now the tilt was back, and Leipus gave him exercises. What had been happening during the session breaks now had to happen out in the open.

  Laxman was four short of a double then, and you realised Dravid had begun to shepherd him. In that hour Laxman faced only 39 balls out of 90. In the last seven overs, Dravid had faced 31 deliveries. Dravid, who had fed off Laxman’s momentum and learned from Laxman’s momentum, was now giving back to him. They had played together often for South Zone in age-group cricket and in the Duleep Trophy. Now the firm was going global. Dravid knew he need not bother about tempo as long as Laxman was there, Laxman knew Dravid wouldn’t throw it away as long as he was conscious.

  For a second, soon after the drinks break, Dravid borrowed Laxman’s audacity. Towards the end of another spell where Gillespie kept doing things with the ball at 145kph, one stayed dangerously low. Dravid not only kept it out, he worked it through midwicket to reach 89 off 186, his best against Australia. Laxman soon got his double, driving a wide half-volley from Mark Waugh for four. The two hugged and went back to work.

  As Dravid neared his century, the realigned Laxman resumed domination of the strike. Dravid’s progress further wasn’t smooth. He spliced a hook off Kasprowicz, and then under-edged another off Mark Waugh. We were entering dangerous territory: Dravid had been dismissed in the 90s four times before this. Ganguly still had his upper body wrapped in a towel. He was not the only superstitious one. During an over break, Warne, Adam Gilchrist and Justin Langer swapped their shades. Nothing worked. Laxman went past 206 off Warne’s bowling – the highest score by an Indian against Australia; the previous best had been by Ravi Shastri before Warne made him his first Test victim. Dravid was now using his feet well to Warne, not quite driving inside-out from the rough outside leg but kicking him away well.

  Dravid was nearly run out on 97 when Matthew Hayden dived at cover but couldn’t hit the stumps. A tired Dravid had given up. Before the start of the next over, that showman Warne made Dravid wait. He took his time setting the field. Called in forward short leg. Then moved a fielder in the deep a few feet. Then called for a silly point. Then Gilchrist moved a man in the deep. Dravid waited. Three times the bat went up and down in the stance. Dravid, who had been accused of not moving to the pitch of the ball, now stepped down and drove him wide of mid-on. Six steps down the pitch, he leapt into the air. Not too high, but high enough to suggest how much this meant. Then you saw it on his face. Anger. He raised his bat to the dressing room, and then pointed it to a higher level, to the media box.

  Tony Greig, just the man for the occasion, was on air. He used the words “sticks it up”. That’s the joint-angriest Dravid has ever been in the public eye. The other was when he was asked in Pakistan if a match that India had fought hard to win was fixed. This, though, was more personal. Deeper. The constant criticism must have got to him. This over-my-dead-body hundred was perhaps the last affirmation he needed to know he belonged. And how he belonged.

  Dravid’s hundred included 13 fours, nine of them in front of square on the leg side. Fifty-eight of the runs came there. Mostly clips, flicks, drives, and the odd pull. The bowling and conditions had been conquered by now. India led by well over 200, a defendable target, with six wickets still in hand. This Australian team, though, came with an aura. Nothing was considered beyond them. India needed to bat through till stumps at least.

  Seven minutes before tea, Jagmohan Dalmiya, the ICC under his chairmanship and the Cricket Association of Bengal his fiefdom, announced an award of 2 lakh for Laxman, for the first double by an Indian at the Eden Gardens. He made sure it was announced during the live coverage on TV. Soon the big board at the ground would announce 1,000 for each of Laxman’s runs until his 236th, then the highest Test score by an Indian, and 2,000 for each run after that. Laxman’s beauty not only survived amid the crassness, it blossomed.

  At tea, the contest still alive, the game still anybody’s, Australia let the Indians lead the teams off the field. Dravid let Laxman stay a pace ahead. Shastri, a commentator then, couldn’t wait for stumps to shake Laxman’s hand. Leipus waited inside to realign him. It would have been hard enough for a fit and fresh man to stay focused, and Dravid was about to begin cramping up. “See you after the session,” Wright said, and Dravid – having swapped his full-sleeved shirt for a fresh half-sleeved one – went out and waited for Laxman to arrive.

  Australia tried to put a brave face on, charging onto the field, throwing the ball around, looking sprightly, waving to the camera, their one last effort to reclaim a winning position. Two years before, on March 14, leading West Indies 1-0, they had seen Brian Lara score a crazy, match-winning double-century. Jimmy Adams was the Dravid to Lara’s Laxman then. Did Steve Waugh, a historically minded captain, think of that game? Surely it was not going to happen again? Not after India had been asked to follow on. Only twice had a team won from such a predicament.

  Hayden – Australia had already tried everybody except Langer, Gilchrist and Steve Waugh – and McGrath resumed proceedings after tea. Hayden bowling nagging swing at around 125-130kph, and McGrath using the unevenness of the bounce. Dravid clipped Hayden off the pads and limped through for one. Cramp? A muscle pull? McGrath tested him further. Dravid played out two successive maidens from McGrath. Too tired to manoeuvre the ball or steal a quick run. Leipus made another trip soon. With a tablet and a saline drink. It was cramps, then, which don’t qualify you to get a runner. Dravid could hardly lift his arms. The pill hit the helmet grille and fell. Leipus placed it inside his mouth. He also undid and redid the pads, to relive some of the strain on the calves.

  In the next over, the two of them hobbled through for a single,
and Steve Waugh – who had been trying all day to sneak in a run-out – fumbled. Chappell compared it to the deep end of a heavyweight bout between sluggers who were too tired to even throw punches. No one was taking a dive, though. Not just yet. Dravid had now stopped bothering about the singles. He on-drove Hayden for four to take India past 500, and then cover-drove McGrath through a tight field. Laxman screamed from the other end: “Played, Jam.” “Hang in, Jam.” Didn’t matter if it was a four or a block or leave. Dravid would nod. They knew they were to see Wright only after the end of the session.

  At some point before the final drinks break of the day, Ganguly had put on a shirt. A sign India were out of the woods? Venkatesh Prasad and Venkatapathy Raju, who earlier dared not move from their seats, were now mimicking how Bansal raised his finger. Gillespie came back for another brutally unlucky spell. He even tried running in with his arms spread like an eagle, in a bid to distract the batsmen. Warne bowled bouncers. Laxman joked with Peter Willey, presumably – and cheekily - asking him if Dravid could get a runner. Let alone a runner, soon Willey would banish energy drinks too. Try telling this to today’s players, who enjoy unscheduled breaks at the slightest excuse, as the powerless umpires watch.

  Back then, India were only just entering the modern professional era. They didn’t have laptops and analysts; they didn’t even have neckerchiefs. Some resourceful person in the back room sliced towels into thin strips and put them in ice. During the drinks break, Hemang Badani and Sarandeep Singh tied them on the batsmen’s necks. It was not difficult to draw boxing parallels. The bell rang again.

  Laxman soon reached 250. That was 2,64,000 worth. A tenth of what they get from an advertisement contract nowadays? A decade later, Ishant Sharma, playing for Kolkata Knight Riders, made 1.5 lakh per ball bowled. Not all the money in the world could buy the joy and satisfaction of exhaustion that Laxman and Dravid would have felt then.

  Six overs later, they got new makeshift neckerchiefs. Dravid turned Mark Waugh around the corner to reach 150. He was not angry now. It might have seemed he was too exhausted to show anger, but on the evidence of the rest of his career, Dravid’s earlier show of emotion was an aberration. He was moving smoothly now. Australia even tried Langer now. Without further incident, Dravid and Laxman became the third Indian pair – after Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy, and Gundappa Viswanath and Yashpal Sharma – to bat through a day’s play.

  That’s 540 legal deliveries, nine modes of dismissals possible with each, and none came to pass. Laxman had added 166 runs, Dravid 148. From being minus-274 on March 13, the day Dravid was still a man too obsessed with technique to score runs, a man with low averages against the best attacks of the day, India were now 315 ahead. Australia’s dream had been interrupted. They had had bad decisions against them when they batted. They were about to break through the doors of the Final Frontier. Then this happened. So beautiful was this that Australia lined up to congratulate the two batsmen.

  Once again, Laxman and Dravid led the way off the field. They had just about enough energy to shake hands before walking straight into the makeshift hospital that was the dressing room. One man went on a lunch table, the other on the physio’s. Doctors were ready with drips. The two now lay next to each other, in the knowledge they had shared something special, that, in Dravid’s words, “would define our careers from now on, irrespective of what we achieved or didn’t achieve after that”.

  On the fifth day, Laxman added only six before cutting McGrath straight to deepish gully. A period of uncertainty followed. India kept batting without any increase in the tempo, despite a lead of over 300. Every over purposelessly batted away diminished their chances of winning, which would be the only perfect end to this turnaround. Turned out Wright and Ganguly had conferred and decided they wanted to frustrate Australia, who didn’t like being played out of a game.

  It was the perfect chance for Dravid to get to a double-hundred. He simply wouldn’t get the strike, though. He scored 25 off the 34 balls he got on the fifth morning, and as he tried to steal a single when Zaheer Khan pushed one to cover, he was sent back. Dravid had covered more than 22 yards in running up and coming back, and he was caught short. He went back shaking his head.

  Not all the way back to the pavilion, though. He wasn’t an angry man anymore. He was to cherish the moment. He raised his bat to all parts of the ground before walking off. He now knew he belonged.

  Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

  The bowlers who got Dravid out most often in ODIs were both fairly unlikely names: Sanath Jayasuriya and Abdul Razzaq, who dismissed him six times each.

  [ 15 ]

  The monk of Headingley

  SANJAY BANGAR

  While Kolkata 2001 was the first glimpse of a new, aggressive India, it was at Headingley a year later that the team showed real steel. Rahul Dravid was the chief forger, absorbing all the heat to create one of India’s most memorable wins abroad.

  148 v England, third Test, Leeds, 2002

  Matthew Hoggard delivered a fuller-length delivery on my leg stump. It had looked, at least to me, like an innocuous ball going down leg side, and I reacted accordingly. But suddenly it slithered past my hanging bat, like a fast legbreak on a turning pitch.

  Rahul Dravid walked up to me and said with a smile, “Boss, this is not Karnail Singh.” Karnail Singh is the home ground of my domestic team, Railways, and its pitch is slow, flat and low. Headingley, Leeds, in the north of England, was cold, fast and unreliable.

  The year 2002 was an interesting one for me and Indian cricket. The English summer had been mixed going in to Headingley. We had won the NatWest ODI series final after coming back from the dead. It was a wonderful achievement for Indian cricket; the chase of 325 was one of the top five in ODI history at the time, and we achieved it after losing nearly all our specialist batsmen.

  We lost the first Test at Lord’s. At Trent Bridge, Ajay Ratra, the first-choice wicketkeeper, was not fit to take the field and 17-year-old Parthiv Patel made his debut. England dominated the first four days, but India, led by a century from Rahul, fought valiantly on the final day to save the Test. I don’t think we could have drawn it if not for Parthiv’s daring efforts with the tail in the final 20 overs. That fightback gave us fresh belief for the rest of the tour.

  The day before the Leeds Test, John (Wright) told me I was to play. Of my five Tests till then, I had done well in three. In the last, in the West Indies a few months ago, I had failed. I asked John where my career stood. He plainly told me, “I do not know.” So I knew this was my make-or-break Test.

  Sourav won the toss and elected to bat since we had two spinners in the side. On TV, Sunil Gavaskar called it a brave decision. Nasser Hussain smiled happily for he had a good four-pronged fast-bowling attack that could take advantage of the overcast conditions.

  The much talked-about Headingley pitch was foreign to me, though I had read about it in Darren Gough’s autobiography, so I knew about its slope and what kind of adjustments a bowler would need to make. Even Rahul, who came out in the seventh over after Veeru (Sehwag) edged Hoggard to slip, was playing only his second match there. He had played there for Kent against Yorkshire in 2000, but that match had finished inside three days.

  It was the first time I was batting with Rahul in a Test. Already that year he had impressed me by taking the initiative to get the team together. At the start of the West Indies tour he said every player would be asked to talk about the team. I wrote a poem and read it out during our first meeting. That move by Rahul, I felt, brought the team together and made newcomers like me feel more confident.

  He also asked me out to dinner in the Caribbean. In England, after the second Test, I returned the favour, and he was happy to join me with two other team-mates. By the time we batted at Headingley we were comfortable with each other.

  Neither of us spoke a lot on the field, and
the only instruction Rahul gave me was to look out for sharp singles and always be ready to run. I was a slow runner but Rahul never showed his disappointment. We were going at just about two runs an over till lunch, yet he didn’t ask me to change my approach.

  Not that it meant Headingley was quiet. The fans kept shouting “Geddon with it.” The close-in fielders chirped constantly, telling us we were going nowhere with our two-per-over run rate. “Mate, you’re not getting enough runs… a couple of wickets and you’ll be the same again,” they said.

  Early in the innings I noticed a big difference in our techniques: Rahul was looking to get forward, as close to the pitch of the ball as possible, but would play with soft hands, whereas I was hanging back in my crease, trying to use the pace of the ball to create runs. That was probably why he took more blows on his fingers, hands, elbows and body.

  The first session was the most important: England’s bowlers were hostile, looking for one wicket, just one. They were confident they could tear a part the rest of our batting order once they broke through. Rahul not only stopped them from doing that, he frustrated, annoyed and exhausted them for the better part of five sessions.

  There were three things Rahul had to counter in the innings: swing, seam, and awkward and variable bounce. He weathered them successfully for more than seven hours, revealing his strength of character and his quality as a batsman.

  Hoggard and Andy Caddick mostly moved the ball away, so once you got your eye in, you didn’t really falter against them. But Alex Tudor had natural inswing, and that added to the variable bounce made him the most dangerous bowler to face, at least in the first session. He bowled a hostile spell and troubled us the most. He kept bowling into our bodies. When a bowler does that, no matter how good a batsman you are, you start to think about getting hit.