Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel

by Chappell, Greg

  Rahul copped a few from Tudor. Once, before lunch, he was hit hard on his fingers, but he didn’t flinch. As a batsman you are always looking to score mental victories over your opponent. The next ball hit him on the forearm. The message he conveyed to Tudor was: I’m digging in and I’m not going to give my wicket away easily. It was old-fashioned Test cricket.

  I have seen many Rahul Dravid innings. The striking thing, to me, was that he played more balls outside off stump initially, as against when he was settled. It seemed like after a poor tour of Australia in 1999-2000, he wanted to assert himself early in an innings. If he made 20 or 25, he could get into his comfort zone and start leaving balls outside off stump alone. At Headingley, though, he was happy to keep shouldering arms, as many times as possible. It was as if John had asked him to do a set of exercises repeatedly.

  Rahul understood that the bowler would beat him many times and that he needed to accept that. I call him a monk in that respect. He does not have an ego and can easily concentrate on the next ball after he has been beaten by one. Many other batsmen might have struggled in a similar situation. The key was, Rahul knew exactly what he had to do to survive on this wicket and he adapted accordingly. It is a given that Indian batsmen will score runs on spin-friendly pitches. They have also got runs on fast and bouncy Australian wickets. But very few Indians have succeeded in seaming and swinging conditions.

  The effect of his patience was so strong that though England’s fast bowlers bowled some good spells, they were eventually frustrated. In fact, we later read that Duncan Fletcher, then England’s coach, was so disappointed with his bowlers’ lines that he started drawing charts to explain to them where exactly to pitch the ball. One of the mistakes they made was to keep pitching it mostly back of a length instead of full.

  By the time Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav started dominating, Rahul had crushed England’s will. He was the one who went out in the vanguard and neutralised the dangers of the pitch, allowing the other two to easily post big scores. It was the first time in six years that all three scored centuries in the same Test.

  After that our seamers and spinners combined to deny England any room in which to fight back. It was one of India’s largest victories overseas.

  In a way that match changed the general opinion about Indian cricketers. We took a lot of risks at Headingley. It was the turning point of our overseas record. We had not beaten big teams outside India. The tide was turning. And Rahul had a lot to do with that.

  Sanjay Bangar, who played 12 Tests for India, and scored 68 at Headingley, spoke to ESPNcricinfo assistant editor Nagraj Gollapudi

  [ 16 ]

  Twin treatises in courage

  ROHIT BRIJNATH

  When India went to Australia late in 2003, few predicted they would get away with more than honourable defeats. After a rain-affected draw in Brisbane, the second Test belonged to Rahul Dravid, who led India to their first win in Australia in over 20 years, with two innings of efficient purity and defiance. “Rahul batted like god,” his captain, Sourav Ganguly, said.

  233 and 72* v Australia, second Test, Adelaide, 2003

  Dusk descended gently and soon a scoreboard that told an improbable tale would be obscured. Seagulls loitered as sprinklers hiccupped. The team bus had gone home and the Adelaide Oval echoed with silence. But inside the dressing room, amidst the detritus of empty Gatorade bottles and sandwich wrappers, he was still there, tired smile on drawn face, cold beer in limp hand, the hero contemplating his finest moment.

  Above him, as he craned to look, high on the wall hung a whiteboard, on which the names of travellers who had taken five wickets or scored a century were inscribed. His name had not been written yet, the 233 beside it, but his eyes told you he could already read it. Maybe Rahul Dravid just wanted to slowly inhale the last remaining scent of victory, take one last look at this foreign place where he and his team had imprinted its greatness. His team had owned this stadium briefly, and he was not ready to leave just yet.

  It wasn’t unusual for him, this lingering, it is part of why he plays. “I do that quite often,” he says. “I like the warmth of the dressing room. After you’ve done five days of battle it feels like home, to share so many emotions with so many different people, it’s fantastic to stay and soak in it.”

  Those innings in Adelaide, the 233 and the 72 not out, were essays in concentration, studies in craftsmanship, treatises in courage. They were the most compelling advertisement of the truth that he is one of finest batsmen of his generation. They are also, not wholly but partially, an education in him as player and man.

  Last month, in Wisden Asia Cricket magazine, he wrote an article on books. He remembered his days as a young player, curled up on the wooden bunk as the train rattled its way to another match, reading To Kill a Mockingbird. In Adelaide, Racers, the story of the dramatic 1996 Formula One season, rested on his table. But there is one book he identifies with powerfully, perhaps because the tale has something of him in it. David Halberstam’s The Amateurs studies in detail the quest of American rowers for Olympic selection, dissecting their pain, their rage, the obsession of their journey. Down the phone from Hobart, Dravid explains: “It shows you true passion and true drive. It’s what sport is about for people who play it. It’s not about the accolades or the money, but about the personal battles, the sacrifice. It’s about the process, and I enjoy that.”

  His process, as in Adelaide, commences in the morning. The silent warrior awakes, then in his room he visualises – the portrait of an artist in boxer shorts. As his batting suggests, this man prefers method to chance. He will see the bowler in his mind, envision his action, and then barefoot, with bat in hand, take stance and meet the imaginary ball.

  In the first innings, he is there in total for 594 minutes, searching for harmony between mind and feet, discovering a way to stay in concentration’s embrace. He does not care for statistics, he is not distracted by his nation spellbound, for he says, “You can’t be thinking, ‘What if I fail?’

  “You can’t concentrate for ten hours. You switch on and off, you push yourself, your mind wanders, you bring it back, you steel yourself. That’s the real beauty, when you win the battle against yourself,” he explains.

  This is the essence of Dravid, waging his silent, private war. He is occasionally bewildered that after he is done, the pleasure of what he has accomplished is not that powerful; for him, “more joy” is found while completing the task.

  He is an inward-looking player, an analyser, constantly scrutinising his art, dismembering his innings and emotions into pieces for study. Predictably, he is too intelligent to be at ease with this hero business; he finds it discomforting, exaggerated. He says: “I don’t really feel like a hero, my only qualification is that I come on television more than a nurse or a soldier or a teacher. Anyway, I don’t think sportsmen can really be considered heroes.”

  At the crease in Adelaide, his brain will register heat, applause, scoreboard, partner, but it is the specific bowler of the moment that he is attuned to. That this is Jason Gillespie running in, hair askew, awakens the warrior in him. “The Australians always come hard at you, you’re always in a contest, and this makes it easier to concentrate. In fact, when change bowlers like [Simon] Katich come on, you have to focus harder.”

  His second innings, India chasing 230, is more valuable, more arduous. The pressure is stifling and his fine form of earlier days initially deserts him. “I didn’t feel in much control. I had to fight through periods, refocus, reminding myself of what I wanted to achieve. My goal was to not get out, to make it as difficult as I could.”

  He is both calm and desperate, driven by emotion yet aware it is dangerous. “I’ve been playing for seven years and we’ve lost a lot of games, and I was just fed up, and during many periods on Tuesday I kept telling myself I didn’t want to go through that again.”

  His batt
ing is evidence of a careful work ethic, of a player who shares a comfortable companionship with discipline. After the Test, his captain, Sourav Ganguly, will say on television: “He’s the best role model you can have, because he works so hard, thinks so much.” But this is also genetics, this willfulness written into some invisible chromosome. He says his mother, an artist, “is a very determined woman; when she sets her mind to something she does it”. Mother gets a doctorate in art in her mid-50s, and son takes photographs at the ceremony; of these innings, mother would approve.

  In the first innings, he plays 446 balls, in the second, 170, so many just watched and left as if unworthy of his bat’s attention. Monks are less circumspect than him, and indeed, when he plays it appears he is delivering a sermon on batsmanship. Yet his carefully calibrated approach has a powerful reason. “As much as I get confidence from playing shots, I also sometimes gain confidence from leaving balls, because it gives me an idea of where my off stump is.”

  His batting is not, for some, immediately appealing; it is like some paintings, it requires a second look, a considered appreciation. Soon its beauty is revealed, its simple elegance, its clean, classical lines, its divorce from awkwardness, its stylish symmetry. He plays to his own wondrous sheet music. He is the owner of more shots than some believe; he is merely fastidious about what to play when, but when he delivers, in Adelaide, cover drives of such precise sophistication, it is worth any wait. Polished, fussy batsmen like him are often eclipsed by the quicker scorers, those with flair and flourish. It scarcely bothers him. “People like to come and watch great shots, and players playing attractively. That’s natural. So would I.”

  But this unpretentious, engaging man is an owner of different virtues, just as precious. As he says: “I don’t have some of the gifts of a Tendulkar or a Lara, but I have other things. I’d like very much to be respected as someone who is courageous and fights and does his best. I enjoy an innings [like the 233 and 72], for it brings out different facets of my character that are dear to me – commitment and discipline and courage.” But he knows gifts themselves mean little; in themselves they are inadequate.

  “The challenge,” he says, “is making the best of the gifts you have got. I have learnt this from Tendulkar, who has worked extremely hard to make best use of his gifts.”

  All his life, even when belittled, Dravid has stayed faithful to these gifts. Years ago, when considered unfit for the one-day team, even told to sandpaper his offspin because it might help selection – a time of great humiliation for him – his response was classic. Then, he told me, he could have either moped and moaned and believed the world was against him, or he could have gone to the nets and found a way to get better. He chose well.

  But let us not believe he is all seriousness, some swotting student with no time to look at and smell life, because that is not him. Mostly, in fact, if you meet him for dinner, there is a charm and roundedness to him that is appealing.

  Indeed, of all the moments in Adelaide, the one he enjoys more than most points to a man who delights at cricket’s charming surprises. It came around tea on the third day. He had begun the day at 43, VVS Laxman on 55, yet late in the day when he looked at the scoreboard, he noticed with amusement that he, impossibly, had outpaced his usually more fluent friend. You don’t need to see the grin on his face, because he is laughing down the phone when he talks of this: “Yeah, jeez, not a bad effort for a blocker, huh?”

  No, not bad at all.

  Rohit Brijnath covered the 2003 Adelaide Test for the Melbourne Age, for whom he worked at the time and where this article was first published. He is now a senior correspondent with the Straits Times in Singapore.

  Dravid scored more Test runs and centuries at Eden Gardens than at any other ground. In nine Tests there he made 962 runs at an average of 68.71, with four hundreds.

  [ 17 ]

  Notes from an ugly epic

  RAHUL BHATTACHARYA

  Rahul Dravid’s Rawalpindi marathon was a landmark for being the longest Test innings in Indian history, and more for securing India’s first-ever Test series victory in Pakistan. It was the ultimate background innings, uncharacteristic in its lack of fluency but typical for its awesome commitment. He was in excellent humour throughout. This is an edited excerpt from Pundits from Pakistan: on tour with India 2003-04.

  270 v Pakistan, third Test, Rawalpindi, 2004

  A world away Brian Lara was approaching a quadruple-century in a Test innings, and accordingly some guests arrived late to Waqar Younis’ retirement dinner in Rawalpindi, some left early, others whisked themselves away to the giant screen in the coffee shop.

  Rahul Dravid watched the moment on the TV in the gymnasium area. With him was the Marathi journalist and editor Sunandan Lele. Dravid marvelled at Lara’s technique, which allowed him the option of a defensive stroke or an attacking one to every ball till the very last moment. Above all he marvelled at Lara’s appetite. Lele had just interviewed Dravid. He had asked him about his dry run in this Test series. “Vees,” Dravid had held up two fingers and replied, “vees houn dya” (Twenty, just let me get past 20).

  And at dinner on day one of the Test, he excused himself early from the table. He wanted to sleep well, he told his companions, because he had to bat all day tomorrow.

  Presuming an opening stand longer than one ball, the Maestro was a touch late to the crease the previous evening, still attiring himself as he reached. But now, after a good night’s rest, Dravid fell clean out of his groove. The good’uns still make it count; and maestros, of course.

  He was just not feeling it. Mohammad Sami had a close lbw shout against him on the fourth ball of the morning. Soon he edged Shoaib Akhtar out of the reach of third slip. On 21, he was a goner, surely, struck again by Sami on the pads. Not given.

  This was not an easy morning for India, nor was it expected to be, for the grass still had not fully browned and there was movement about. Parthiv Patel was briefly troubled by Shoaib’s bouncers. Ill-advisedly Shoaib bowled only bouncers, all for a macho smirk at watching a little guy leap about.

  Parthiv fell soon after lunch, pushing Fazl-e-Akbar away from his body, which brought Sachin Tendulkar to the crease. Shoaib was produced at the other end. First ball, back of a length, steaming hot, climbing, shoulder height, off stump, wicked, evasion from Tendulkar, jubilation from the keeper, appeal from Shoaib, no response from umpire, Tendulkar walks, 130 for 3.

  In the snap of a finger the game had opened up. Pakistan needed to break the door down. Some magic, some madness, some inimitable Pakistani inspiration; this was the moment, now was the time.

  Nervous moments followed for India. VVS, the new man, made a wristy edge off Shoaib. Dravid top-edged Fazl over the keeper.

  Fazl and Sami strayed on to the pads of the Indian gents, an irredeemable error, and accordingly were creamed for boundaries. Dravid began treating Sami’s bowling with increasing disrespect, taking two more off-side boundaries, but on 71, with the total on 177, he allowed himself a flailing up-and-under cut, the type he rarely indulges himself with. Yasir Hameed plonked it at point. It was, as they say, a lollipop. Yasir said later, endearingly: “Sometimes you get so engrossed in watching batsmen like Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar that you lose focus on your job.”

  Dravid continued to buffet rough seas. On 77, there was a prolonged inquiry into a caught-behind off Danish Kaneria. It was, even on the slowest replay, a not fully discernible flurry of bat, boot, earth and ball. My own impression from the freeze frames was that it had gone from bat to boot to the keeper, which should be out.

  Misery was piled on misery: Dravid edged a cut wide of slip in Kaneria’s next over. From the other end Shoaib bowled another bumper, which jarred Dravid’s finger, and the physio was summoned. This was a wretched innings. But look at the score.

  Tea was taken, and after it VVS opened his wings and soared away. Ther
e was nothing to do but blush. On three occasions he took a pair of boundaries off Fazl. He flick-pulled him to square leg; he punched him into the covers and touched him straight down. Pakistan’s fieldsmen may as well have retired to their tents, for VVS was not about to hit to them. To his five boundaries in the 90 minutes before tea, he added seven more in just 30 minutes after.

  Dravid picked his own pace, hooking Fazl unconvincingly and straight-driving him utterly convincingly. Pakistan were not stuck between a rock and a hard place, more like between an advancing wall and a dancing swordsman. Whatever is the chemistry that these two share, can it please be bottled up and stored for all time?

  With a turn to leg off Kaneria he reached his 17th Test hundred. He now had a century in and against every country barring Bangladesh, an anomaly he would rectify before the year was out. On only one of these 17 occasions had India lost.

  Inzamam claimed the new ball as soon it became available. Shoaib drew an edge from Dravid, it flew, down, wide of second slip, and two slips were all there were. It was impossible to remember a Dravid innings as coarse as this.

  Out of nowhere, on a day he had spent peppering his own toe, Shoaib screeched an outswinging full toss past a half-flick and into the middle stump halfway up, leaving VVS blinking at a blur. Sourav Ganguly was greeted by a leg gully, a forward short leg, many slips, and crimson flames blowing out of Shoaib’s nose. On the first delivery to the Indian captain, Shoaib tumbled and fell in his follow-through and left the field.