Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel

by Chappell, Greg

  It’s not necessarily that you need to play defensive, tight cricket all through the Test match, but you should also have the ability to recognise moments in a Test match when it needs to be done. Whether it’s saving a Test match, it’s the morning of a Test match, whether it’s when the second new ball is to be taken and there’s going to be a good spell. Being able to recognise those moments and being able to adapt and play your game, to have the game to be able to do that, is important. You deciding to play in one particular way all the time, whether that’s defensive or it’s positive, is not necessarily in the best interests of the team. Sometimes the team might need you to grind it out and you should have the skills and the ability to do that and you should take pride in learning those skills and wanting to do that if you don’t have them.

  The flip side of the coin is that there might be times the team might need you to play positively and want you to play some shots and set up the game. Then you should be able to do that as well. It works both ways, and sometimes I feel that this ability to see out a tough period and grind out a tough period is something that you might lose the ability to do, if batsmen are not careful.

  Has the definition of quality batsmanship changed over the course of your career? Are there just fewer people able to meet that description?

  Quality batsmanship for me is being able to play according to the situation, having the ability to play all sorts of roles. Quality batsmanship is not only playing great shots or only leaving good balls. Quality batsmanship is having a range to be able to do all things in all conditions consistently over a period of time. Some are more pleasing to the eye and some are less pleasing to the eye. That’s the nature of how we play, and that’s the gift of timing. That’s something you can’t teach. That’s just how we are, but in terms of our value to the team, it’s incredibly important that you explore the range of your skills and all the skills required to succeed in Test cricket.

  That’s why Test cricket is the greatest form of the game, because it throws up different challenges at different times. You can really see in Test cricket – the successful guys are problem-solvers, who would have found a way or skills to find solutions necessary to succeed in all these situations. Whereas in one-day and T20, you can get away, because of the place where you bat. You could be a No. 6 all your life and you could be fine. You don’t need certain skills or to play certain kinds of bowling. You could make a successful career of it, but you can’t do that in Test cricket, because even a No. 6, in certain times, would be forced or challenged to play good-quality quick bowling. Sometimes in the first session of a Test match or with the second new ball. Test cricket is a bit more of a thorough examination of your skills.

  Given your style of batting, when ODI cricket began to grow, did you almost feel that you belonged to another time and another environment? How did you cope with that?

  I did belong to another generation. When I grew up playing cricket, it was all about playing Test cricket. It was all about being a great Test player. In those days the teams were picked for Test cricket, for Test matches, and the same team played the one-dayers. The one-dayers were almost a preparation. Even when we went to England in 1996, I remember the same Test team played the one-dayers. They were played beforehand. The senior guys almost saw the one-dayers as preparation for the Test matches. That’s how it was considered as late as ‘95-‘96. But you could sense ODIs were slowly coming.

  Then, as I started playing, the one-day thing exploded. I had to adapt and I had to learn how to play a few more shots. I got dropped from the one-day side, I had to fight my way back and learn how to play it. You could see from the way people were playing the first 10-15 overs of the one-day game that a lot of this was going to seep into Test cricket. You are seeing that now in T20 cricket also. That 1996 World Cup helped one-day cricket take off in a lot of ways. In India and across the world.

  Did coping with the demands of ODI cricket benefit your Test game?

  I’m sure it did. The necessity and keenness to play more shots, to discover more shots, would definitely have helped my Test game, because it would have meant that I could have brought some of that into my game. In terms of shot-making and stroke-making ability, it did help my Test game.

  Did you ever worry about being left out in this changing environment?

  In 1998, when I was dropped, it did worry me a bit. But I also recognised that I needed to learn certain skills. The game was changing around me and I needed to adapt and become better at it. I wanted to play both forms of the game. At no stage did I ever think that I didn’t want to play one-day cricket, that I’d be happy playing just Test cricket. I never wanted to do that. I wanted to play for India all the time. I knew that I had the skills to play one-day cricket. I knew that I could do it. Obviously it took me a little time. I had to practise it a little more, and I went through some ups and downs. I didn’t expect to be dropped at that stage. It was disappointing. It takes time to learn and grow in international cricket, and I felt that I was just learning and beginning to grow and I had that setback. But I think when I look back on it – it doesn’t make any difference now – when you look back at it 15 years later, it’s easier to say it did help me.

  Being dropped took me away from the game, allowed me to practise, and I just fought my way back. Being dropped and fighting my way back just showed me how much I wanted it. It just showed me my own desire. It did a lot for me just personally, taught me that I can fight my way back out of tough situations.

  The 1999 World Cup was a watershed. I had just come back to the team for the World Cup. There was not a lot of one-day cricket, and I got into the side four-five months before the World Cup. So to do well in the World Cup and become the highest scorer or whatever, that sort of gave me the confidence. This was a world event, a world stage, conditions outside India. I did well and it gave me the confidence that from there on I could be fine.

  How has the Indian dressing room changed from the time you walked into it and as you leave it now?

  Dressing rooms are dressing rooms. But when we started we didn’t have a music box in the room. So now it’s gone from no music box to loud music being played. I like the music. Sometimes the taste of some of the guys in music, I might not particularly like. But you have to endure it sometimes. Rap music is not my scene but it seems to be pretty popular nowadays. There’s a lot more support staff now in the changing room than we had in those days. There is a level of professionalism that has gone up in the way people prepare and in the way they look after themselves and their bodies. That’s just a reflection of the game, professionalism in the game.

  You’ve played against many of the greats of the game and shared a dressing room with some of them as well. Over and above ability, what would you say is the common denominator that can actually be imitated?

  They always put cricket first, irrespective of who they were, what they might have done, what their other interests might have been. Cricket was the most important thing in their lives and doing well in cricket was the most important thing. Everything else was secondary – the fame, the money, the attention. Each one of us might have done things differently, we have other interests, but underneath, deep down, there was a huge desire to put cricket first and to become good cricketers. When I look around, some of the legends I played with, in a world where there is so much external stimulus – and it’s increasing all the time – it’s not that they didn’t have other interests or do anything else in their life and that cricket was everything, no. But at the core of it all, when everything was cleared away, deep down they wanted to be really good cricket players. It wasn’t necessarily about winning and losing.

  What advice would you give a Rahul Dravid if he was starting his cricket now, in this age?

  I would definitely tell a young kid that you can learn all the three forms of the game and you should aim to play and succeed in all three forms of the ga
me. I would tell a kid that cricket is also a journey of self-discovery and knowing yourself. You need to spend a lot of time understanding and figuring out yourself as much as you need to spend learning the skills of the game. People talk about the mental side of the game. You need to know what makes you tick, what your fears are, what your doubts are, how you react in situations, how you react under pressure, how you react when you are playing fast bowling and spin bowling. Each one of us is different, and everyone has fears and doubts.

  Much is said about body language, and neither you nor the Indian team was big on body language. In your experience, how much did that count in a competitor?

  I feel that now good body language is sometimes equated to being abusive or aggressive. Each of us is different, and I think there are people who show more of their body language in a particular manner, and that’s what works for them. Fair enough, I’m not saying that that’s wrong.

  Body language can mean different things. Just because someone is not over-the-top competitive doesn’t mean he’s not a good competitor. Or it doesn’t mean he’s not in for a fight. There are external people and internal people. It doesn’t mean that people who are more internal are less aggressive. They can be as aggressive.

  Sometimes the toughest bowlers, I found, were always the guys who gave away nothing, in terms of the way they thought – what got them angry, what got them frustrated. They were very, very hard guys, because you knew they were just focused on bowling and doing the best they could. Someone like McGrath, someone like Ambrose. When I played Ambrose, it was a great education for me. He never said a thing. I’ve never heard him speak. I don’t know what he sounded like and I was on tour for four months. He gave you nothing. He pitched every ball on the spot, he was proud of his skill and his craft; he wanted to take wickets and he ran in with intensity.

  You knew that intensity. You could sense that intensity with them. They did it throughout the day without showing you much. There were a lot of guys who would shout, stare at you, swear. But you knew they did not have the stamina or the fitness to survive till the end of the day. You could tell that they were emotionally violent but that they would fade.

  Then there were people like Warne or Murali. Warne was dramatic but he was also incredibly aggressive. You knew that when he got the ball in the hand, he was going to come at you. I judge aggression on the way people perform.

  The bowlers I respected or feared or rated were not the ones who gave me lip or stared at me or abused me. More the ones who, at any stage of the game, when they had the ball in hand, were going to be at me, and they were going to have the skill and the fitness and the ability to be aggressive.

  And that was easily picked up?

  You could tell that very quickly. You can see the spell of a guy who’s just raved and ranted, and after tea you can see he’s just not the same bowler. He’s not doing the discipline thing. The team might require him to be bowling one line and blocking up the game because there’s a big partnership developing. And they are more interested in trying to be aggressive, to do their thing and trying to be the hero. It becomes about them, not about what the team is trying to do.

  Coming from a country like India, with a technique attuned to playing spin, what was it like tackling Murali and Warne. What were the methods you used to face them?

  No matter how much practice you have, these guys were great bowlers. They had variation, consistency, control. There were some great spinners during that time – Murali, Warne, and I was lucky to play with Anil and Harbhajan, two guys who bowled well for us. You had Saqlain, who bowled well against us in a couple of series. Daniel Vettori was extremely consistent, bowled good tight lines. So these guys were good. I like to believe we played some of the world’s greatest spinners better than some of the other teams did.

  One of the things is that because we had so much practice, maybe we read some of these guys better. One of the things we did better was that whenever a bad ball was bowled, we were able to punish it, and we had the guys who had that skill. There was a certain amount of pressure on the spinners bowling at us, that they had to be at their A game all the time. And when they were at their A game, they knocked us over a few times, no doubt about it. But you had to be at your A game to do well against us, and you can’t be at your A game all the time.

  What do you make of the general notion that struggling against fast bowling is worse than struggling against spin?

  I think that sort of thing is a throwback to the days when there was no helmet, so there was a fear of injury when facing fast bowling. Everyone would have been scared, but I guess those who showed it were considered weaker. Also, I think subcontinent tours in the old days were not considered the No. 1 tours – people didn’t necessarily value their tours to the subcontinent as much as they valued tours to England, Australia or South Africa. That has changed now, and it’s pretty obvious that with the kind of audience and support that cricket generates in this part of the world, a tour to this part of the world is extremely important now.

  Honestly, if you want to be a good batsman you have to prove yourself in all conditions. To say that it is okay to do badly in the subcontinent, to do badly against spin, is not acceptable anymore. It’s slowly changing. When I look at the media in England, Australia, South Africa, in the past sometimes they would almost have a casual attitude to performances on subcontinent tours. They are also putting a lot more focus and emphasis on it now. When some of their players don’t do well on the subcontinental tours, they get criticised and it gets pointed out and questioned, which is a good thing.

  Your captaincy had some good results and at the same time many dramas. What, firstly, did you like about job?

  I enjoyed the decision-making process in the middle. The actual captaincy side of things was good. I enjoyed being part of the process of trying to build a team, trying to be creative, to see how we could get the best out of players, see how we could win and compete with the resources we have. Those are sides of captaincy you enjoy.

  There were some good results. In the end you have to accept that you are judged a lot by the World Cup in India, whether you like it not. Obviously that World Cup didn’t go well and didn’t pan out the way I had hoped it would. So I guess it clouds a lot of what happened. But I think there were some good results and there were some tough times, like with a lot of captains, but the overriding impression that tends to stay is that World Cup. I’m not here to justify anything. I recognise that I always knew that was going to happen. That’s the way it is.

  Was captaincy something you were actually looking forward to doing?

  I was vice-captain for a long time and I was part of the process, so yes, I knew that if there was an injury or something happened, I would be the next guy in charge. You’re part of the management and decision-making process, you’re contributing, you’re ticking all the time, so you know you have to be ready. I also knew that me and Sourav were also of the same age and it might not happen. When it did happen, I was extremely keen and excited about trying to do a good job of it.

  Did the Chappell drama weigh you down as a captain? When you look at it now, should you have done something differently? Maybe behaved out of personality and been confrontational with him? Or did you believe you and Chappell were on the same page but the environment soured very quickly?

  I think when you look back at any stage of your career, there are things you could have done differently, and that captaincy period is no different. In terms of intention, of what we were trying to achieve, I have no doubt in my mind that you know it was on the right path. Sure, we made mistakes, sure, there were things that we did right, and maybe some of the results didn’t show up right away, they did show up later on, but that’s just the way it is.

  I’ll be the first one to admit – and my whole career is based on looking to improve and trying to do better – that there were times when I could
have done things differently, in the way that I approached it and handled it. Being probably a little less intense. Maybe it came to me that I was so keen to do a good job that I got too caught up in it. I got too tense, too anxious or too keen about it in some ways.

  Do you think that captains can actually lose teams, and that at one point you lost the team?

  Maybe it is. I don’t know if you lose the team. You can lose players in your team and you have to try to fight and get them back sometimes. Or sometimes it’s phases that players are themselves going through in their own careers that push them away from the team. Then there are times when you are making tough decisions about doing certain things that not everybody in the team likes. Then you need results to go your way. At a time like that, if results don’t go your way then sometimes it becomes easy for people in and around the system to, I guess, pull in different directions. Eventually it does become about results. It’s not all about results but results are incredibly important. And I think, especially as we’ve seen in India, results in big tournaments.

  Why did you stand down from the captaincy after the England tour in 2007 that had gone well?

  Maybe I just lost the enjoyment of the job. I got a certain joy out of captaincy, and maybe there was a period on that England trip where I just lost the joy of the job. I’d been playing and captaining non-stop for three years and I also had a young family. I lost a certain enjoyment, and I generally felt that the captain of India should be someone who is extremely eager and excited and wakes up every morning wanting to captain the team. Maybe in that time there were days that I didn’t feel like that.