Why could Rahul Dravid not play aggressive
cricket?
Shashank Jha
Shashank Jha, Cricket would always be the first
love. Always.
Written Dec 20
Chris Gayle is believed to have once said,
Rahul Dravid can play like me, but I can never play
the way he does.
Although imagining Dravid scoring 175* in 66 balls
with seventeen sixes in a T20 match is difficult,
truth is that he always, ALWAYS played according
to the needs of his team.
As Rohan Mohanty and Gaurav Garg pointed out in
their answers, Dravid had time and again proven
that he was perfectly able to score runs at a quicker
pace. A career strike rate of 113.87 in IPL (greater
than that of Sourav Ganguly, FYI!!) is proof that
playing the aerial shots and getting faster runs were
perfectly within his skill set.
But is aggressive cricket just “hitting sixes”?
1
Aggressive cricket is, according to me, always
being a move ahead of the opposition and playing
to win at all times.
Rahul Dravid did all of that. For fifteen years.
The most sincere student of the game, Dravid had
the technique and the grit to build the foundation,
so that the Tendulkars and the Laxmans could
express themselves in the longer version, and the
Yuvrajs and the Dhonis could finish the innings with
a bang in the shorter format. Coming in at no. 3,
Dravid had the game to negotiate all types of
bowling, be it pace or spin or swing. He respected
good deliveries, rarely flirted with danger outside
the off stump, and the smallest of errors from the
bowler resulted in the world’s most beautiful cover
drive.
Even in the 50-over format, Dravid hardly ever
hogged the strike, kept rotating it, thus ensuring the
bowler never settled and bowled to a plan to his
strike partner. He stroked the ball well, and played
attacking shots the way they wrote it in the
textbooks of cricket - with a straight bat, impeccable
footwork and with the knowledge to always play it
along the ground to get results with absolutely zero
risk involved.
2
Not to forget, his sacrifices for the team allowed the
team to go for more attacking options. He kept
wickets for years, just so that his captain could add
that extra batsman to the line-up, which was the
indirect catalyst for some of the most famous Indian
victories. He opened for the team in England, with
no fit or in form openers available and the batting
around him disappointing in each innings (including
the legendary Tendulkar and Laxman) and carried
his bat through the innings, and came back to open
again when India had to follow on.
Think about this for a minute. Not only do you put
your hand up in times of crisis and bat the whole
freaking day, you see your teammates
disappointing you the entire innings, no one to give
you any form of support, and then when there's the
humiliation of a follow on thrust upon the team, you
come back to cop some more.
That's aggression. That's never giving up. That's
the sign of a man willing to give his all for the team.
3
I know that in the last few years after his retirement,
this particular comparison has been done to death,
and I personally hate cliches, but it is the absolute
truth that Dravid was the hero Indian Cricket
needed but never deserved. He did whatever was
needed by the team, and one of those things was to
not play what the OP means by the term
“Aggressive cricket”. The responsibility was his
because no one else could do it. The responsibility
was his because he always put the team ahead of
himself and that required sacrifices of all sorts. It
was always his, because that Indian batting line-up
was a fortress.
It was always his, because a fortress cannot stand
without The Wall.
PS: Link to probably the best write-up about the
man, from probably the best person to write on him.
The wolf who lived for the pack
Zindagi aasan nahi hai…lekin aasan banayi ja sakti hai(Life isn't easy…but can be
made easy);
Kabhi ANDAAZ se aur kabhi NAZARANDAAZ se (sometimes with STYLE and
sometimes by IGNORING),
Kabhi JOSH se aur kabhi HOSH se (sometimes with ENTHUSIASM and sometimes
with ALERTNESS),
4
Kabhi JAZBE se aur kabhi RUTBE se (sometimes with JAZZ and sometimes with
RIGIDITY),
Kabhi HAUSLO se aur kabhi FAISLO se (sometimes with COURAGE and
sometimes with DECISIONS).
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