Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel by Chappell Greg & Manjrekar Sanjay & Kesavan Mukul & Monga Sidharth & Smith Ed & Brijnath Rohit & Ugra Sharda & Wright John & Chopra Aakash

Author:Chappell, Greg & Manjrekar, Sanjay & Kesavan, Mukul & Monga, Sidharth & Smith, Ed & Brijnath, Rohit & Ugra, Sharda & Wright, John & Chopra, Aakash [Chappell, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789381810781
Publisher: ESPNcricinfo
Published: 2013-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

Dravid was precocious that way, always the grown-up cricketer. He had a conscience, and in a way he became ours. There is for me an irony in the mourning for him in a time when Virat Kohli is worshipped. Perhaps we realise what we are losing, perhaps the time of such men has passed. He was teased recently that it was fortunate he was not 22, for he would be a misfit: Dravid with his hair gelled, a tattoo of his wife on his forearm, retinue in tow, snarling, is an image both amusing and obscene.

Dravid took cricket seriously but not always himself. Or you. During the 1999 World Cup, watching me take a few casual swipes with his bat, he fell off his hotel bed laughing and offered this advice: “Please, don’t ever write about technique.” His batting could be classical, yet he never viewed himself as the classical hero. Indeed, the evening after his retirement press conference, he suggested with amusement that his immediate future included “practising my new sweep shot with a broom”.

I met him first in 1996, a slim young man, shirt tucked in, hair parted; and his method on the field would be as fastidious. He saw the nylon cages of the practice nets as his university and practised like a man pursuing a degree he might never earn. There, and on the field, it was the discovery of himself, this uniquely private moment, that he most relished. For him – and you’d groan when he repeated his favourite word – it was about the “process”.

There were many batsmen in Rahul Dravid. The worst one once found him the most applause. In some forgotten one-dayer, he smashed a quick fifty (these very words must make him shiver), and he joked that he received more handshakes for it than for anything before. Of course, he could be a picture of balanced harmony, his shots all refined architecture, and this was becoming. But the cussed Dravid, a man of team cause not crowd, was my favourite, playing to his own scholarly sheet music.