An unassuming man called Rahul Dravid - Part 2

From Neeraj Narayanan, India

There will come a day when Samit Dravid grows up and tries to get a grip of the magnitude of service his father has done to Indian cricket. Everywhere he goes, they will sit him down and tell him glowingly of the man's deeds. Of how Rahul ‘walked’ in his first Test match when he was on 95; a gentleman, they will declare approvingly. Of how he donned the keeper’s gloves to accommodate Yuvraj and Kaif in the team; a team man, they will declare strongly. And young Samit will look on, bored but silent, for a well-mannered boy does not start telling people that he has heard the stories a million times already.

He is Rahul Dravid’s son after all, good manners are in his genes. “Rahul Dravid gotay suna pilla” (Rahul Dravid is a good boy), my (Oriya) grandmum tells me as she concentrates on her sewing, when I ask her what she thinks of his retirement. Every time Samit walks into a cricket game, be it on the street or at a ground, there will be boys looking at him and passing judgment. Whenever he leans on his back foot and uses his wrists to hit a ball through point, they will, on heading back to their homes inform one and all, with that wise tone in their voice, that there really is a bit of Rahul in Samit. Truer words would never be spoken, if only their context was not so blurred.

There should be a bit of Rahul in Samit just as there must be a bit of a father in every son. For Samit’s sake, we hope there is a lot of Rahul in him, even if none of it may be in a cricketing sense. As Samit grows up, there will be girls in his school who will find him cute, and he’ll find ready invitations to their homes. Their fathers will pat his back with a roar and inform him how they always preferred Test cricket over the shorter version. Their mothers will laugh and tell him how they always found Dravid “ the most handsome cricketer”.“Almost as much as Brett Lee”, they may confess as an afterthought.

There might be a few things Samit might never know, though. That there were hundreds of boys who threw their cricket balls into long socks, cut a hole in the latter and then strung it up from a height only so that they could practice their strokes just because Rahul did so in a Pepsi ad. While there may be hundreds of awards on his father’s mantelpiece, he will never know that near a small river in Vaikom, Kerala, there’s a rundown shack selling fish and rice, and the only other colour in its brown walls is a cutting of Dravid’s picture. It’s not a tenth as glossy or pretty as the awards he is looking at, but then ask the man who owns it if it is precious, or beautiful.

He will never know that one day in 2003 (two years before he was born) there were thirty of us not attending our college exam, sitting cramped in a small hostel room watching the proceedings in Adelaide. And when Dravid hit that square cut that gave us our first win in Australia in years, with him there were thirty of us who were raising our fists at the television and telling the world what India really thought of it. We, who grew up in the nineties, feel proud that we grew up then, because it was the decade that brought to our country the internet, cable TV, economic liberalization and three young men called Sachin, Sourav and Rahul.

Now that Dravid has retired, an entire media and ‘social’ nation is talking about it. While pride will be at the centre of Samit’s young heart, a part of him will be puzzled as to why now, just like every time the man scored a century, the effusiveness of the media and his supporters came out in the form of a Shakesperean tragedy. Romantic, but sad. Of how Dravid had always delivered, but was never feted. Of how the man who was the second-highest run-getter wasn’t glorified proportionately.

But Samit should not pay heed to it, for he should know that everyone who has ever loved cricket, or truly understood the game, has loved Rahul Dravid. Not only because he scored so many runs for us, not because he was a middle-class boy who rose to stardom, but because when he did all those things, he did so with grace and honesty.

Dravid’s role will forever be remembered as the finest gentleman of Indian cricket. We all love Sourav for taking off his jersey on the Lord’s balcony, it would be nice to respect Dravid for stopping others from following suit. Like my grandmother said, “Rahul Dravid gotay sunna pilla”.

P.S: You can read part one of the story here.