Rahul Dravid – A Legacy Of Classical Batsmanship

Rahul Dravid – A Legacy Of Classical Batsmanship

`The Wall` has left behind a legacy of batsmanship where he taught the world,
well left is also well played!

 

Rahul Dravid’s exit has not created a vacuum just at the No 3 position, it is also a vacuum of classical batsmanship. Dravid based his entire game around the twin foundations of technique and temperament. In that sense, he emerged as the true batting successor to Sunil Gavaskar. The talent was there, but it was asked to flower under the stewardship of technique. While technique is a means to an end, for Gavaskar and Dravid, the means were also critical, for they had based their ability to score runs entirely on the way their feet moved, the way the bat met the ball, the way the body swayed to a short delivery, etc. 

For Dravid, spending time at the crease and scoring runs were equally important – that was his game and he stuck to that even as he saw a certain Tendulkar and a certain Sehwag maul the opposition with audacious strokeplay on their day. Dravid’s soul lay in just the joy of executing his craft on the 22 yards for long hours. 

I suspect Dravid called it quits not just because he perhaps felt he may not be able score runs heavily and consistently anymore, but maybe also because he felt he would no longer be able to romance the cricket pitch for as many hours as he could at the peak of his prowess. The smell of the cricket pitch and the red cherry when he met it close to his body must be the elixir he looked forward to while participating in the drama of a cricket match.  

Yes, Dravid was not just in love with the game of cricket, but also equally intensely with his craft – the Dravidian art of batting. Right from the time he took guard, the technician in him took over. Everything -- his stance, the tap of the bat as the bowler ran into bowl, the shuffle, the movement of his hands and legs, hand-eye coordination, timing, ability to leave the ball and duck, the classical cover drive and straight drive, the flick through midwicket, and many more -- had a technical base and batting education attached. It was almost like while many of his colleagues chose to play the game the commercial cinema way, Dravid seemed to have come out of the National School of Drama to practice his craft not in the song and dance way, but in the `boring` but meaningful arena of parallel cinema.

While he shared the same 22 yards with his team-mates, he seemed to be batting on a different wicket, sometimes almost giving a feeling that he did not belong, as his piercing drives would find the fielder, whereas some of the other batsmen would simply hit through the line or even over the top. When they got it right, Dravid looked less talented and unexciting, but when they got out and Dravid pulled the team out of yet another crisis, his copybook style and classical batsmanship got vindicated. 

Others often inspired, but Dravid mostly educated. He belonged to a genre of batsmen who survived the rigours of long years of test cricket ultimately not just because of their talent and reflexes, but because of the school of batsmanship they represented. Reflex players will always be more exciting to watch, but due to lack of a game based on technique, they may be found wanting when their reflexes slow down. Technique is an insurance against a longish period of decline, which every sportsman and every human being in life goes through. If you are technically correct, you can limit the damage and even bounce back with greater competence.

Dravid has left cricket, but has left behind a legacy of batsmanship where he taught the world, well left is also well played!

Take a bow, Rahul Dravid.