The Dependable Mr Dravid

Rahul Dravid. Pic/File Pic

As Rahul Dravid, head coach of India's senior men's cricket team, was raised up by his T20-World Cup winning team, where he pumped his fists and showed a range of emotions [so much better than those ‘Indiranagar ka gunda' advertisement] while raising the coveted trophy, my thoughts went back to those days when as a journalism student in Bangalore, and even later, we had the joy of experiencing the greatness of this silent, selfless and dedicated warrior of Indian cricket.

Back in our days as aspiring journalists, we scrapped hard to carve micro-millimetres of column space in the city's leading broadsheets and magazines, all the while harbouring dreams of becoming key members of the fourth estate. Securing that all-important byline felt like winning a gold medal in any discipline, and if you nabbed a big name for your reported articles, voila!, it automatically catapulted you into the big league.

During one such assignment, the theme of our college's weekly newspaper was Sport, and each of us had to interview sportspeople of repute. My toss-up was between Dravid and the other Bangalore favourite - Prakash Padukone. Dravid was on tour, so I did my best to pursue the latter. One afternoon, to my utter disbelief, the Padukone family was lunching at the same popular Udipi that we were at. I mustered the courage to walk up to the man himself, in the hope that he would give me time for an interview at his badminton academy. The All-England champ obliged without the air of a superstar. Tongue-tied, I muttered a half thank-you before speeding away to boast to my gang of the coup.

The high was short-lived though, when a fellow sports-crazy batchmate got time with Rahul Dravid's mother, a professor of architecture, Pushpa, and was invited to their home for her interview. On her return, she was bullied into sharing every tiny detail from that interaction. One anecdote that stood out was that from a young age, ever since Dravid wanted to be a cricketer, he would sleep with a toy bat and ball in his bed. It was front and centre of his thoughts and focus. He had promised his parents that he would bring laurels to his country and do everything to improve his skills to reach that goal. He did that with sheer class, and understated style in a team filled with talented and big names.

Student life was all about ‘jugaad', and so in exchange for a few free rides [my two-wheeler came handy to avoid Bangalore's infamous public transport woes], a friend sneaked me in to hear him speak at his alma mater - St Joseph's Boys' High School. His humility was like second skin, despite the accolades and the superstardom that comes with being an Indian cricketer. He advised those impressionable tenth graders to stay grounded when fame came knocking, irrespective of their profession, and to fight till the end, even if defeat looks more likely than victory. A testimony to what he practised both on and off the field. The thunderous applause was reassuring as those teenagers lapped every word of their famous senior. I had become a full-time fan girl.

Years later, while at a reunion in Bangalore, I happened to be in a bookstore where Dravid was the chief guest to release a book by a friend. Unassuming and low profile to a fault, he patiently obliged every fan who swarmed around him for an autograph. He downplayed his own exploits on field each time a question was darted at his own achievements. "Ask my friend the questions, please," he gushed during the Q&A session. It is this ‘Dravid-ness' that is inspiring and will resonate with anybody keen to look for heroes in our midst, the middle-class workhorses who make big things happen, and yet remain unfazed by the din and bustle.

Flash forward to a few years. We experienced another impactful presence that Dravid had on an audience; this time as a speaker at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The now-retired cricketer was on-stage for a session on leadership in cricket, with a few senior cricket writers and historians as co-panelists. His ease in explaining complex man-management mantras, decoding lessons from the cricket field to the boardroom, and sharp acumen about the subtleties that the game taught him made for a memorable hour, such that I happily skipped another session in the adjacent venue given this one had rolled well over its stipulated time. Again, his patience and calm, especially over tricky questions about his teammates and critical decisions from the crowd, was applause-worthy.

We can only imagine his impact on the current bunch that just won the World Cup. As he signs off in style, his rare display of emotion underlines how much the win meant to him, after years of toil, resilience and discipline as a steadfast servant of the game. It's these attributes that he must have nurtured even in his sleep with that toy cricket bat and ball for company. Go well, Dravid. Next calling - the senior women's team cricket coach, perhaps?

mid-day's Features Editor Fiona Fernandez relishes the city's sights, sounds, smells and stones...wherever the ink and the inclination takes her.
She tweets @bombayana. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com