The art of Dravid

Source: The Age     Date: December 20, 2003

In Adelaide this week, a serene batsman turned Australia's cricketing summer on its head. Rohit Brijnath spoke to Rahul Dravid about how it was done.

 

Dusk descended gently and soon a scoreboard that told an improbable tale would be obscured. Seagulls loitered as sprinklers hiccuped. The team bus had gone home and the Adelaide Oval echoed with silence. But inside the dressing room, amidst the detritus of empty Gatorade bottles and sandwich wrappers, he was still there, tired smile on drawn face, cold beer in limp hand, the hero contemplating his finest moment.

 

Above him, as he craned to look, high on the wall hung a whiteboard, on which the names of travellers who had taken five wickets or scored a century were inscribed. His name had not been written yet, the 233 beside it, but his eyes told you he could already read it. Maybe Rahul Dravid just wanted to slowly inhale the last remaining scent of victory, take one last look at this foreign place where he and his team had imprinted its greatness. His team had owned this stadium briefly, and he was not ready to leave just yet.

 

It wasn’t unusual for him, this lingering, it is part of why he plays. "I do that quite often," he says. "I like the warmth of the dressing room. After you’ve done five days of battle it feels like home, to share so many emotions with so many different people, it’s fantastic to stay and soak it in."

 

Those innings in Adelaide, the 233 and the 72 not out, were essays in concentration, studies in craftsmanship, treatises in courage. They were the most compelling advertisement of the truth that he is one of finest batsmen of his generation. They are also, not wholly but partially, an education in him as player and man.

 

Last month in Wisden Asia Cricket, he wrote an article on books. He remembered his days as a young player, curled up on the wooden bunk as the train rattled its way to another match, soaking in To Kill a Mockingbird. In Adelaide, Racers , the story of the dramatic 1996 formula one season, rested on his table.

 

But there is one book he identifies with powerfully, perhaps because the tale has some of him in it. David Halberstam’s The Amateurs studies in detail the quest of American rowers for Olympic selection, dissecting their pain, their rage, the obsession of their journey. Down the phone from Hobart, Dravid explains: "It shows you true passion and true drive. It’s what sport is about for people who play it. It’s not about the accolades or the money, but about the personal battles, the sacrifice. It’s about the process, and I enjoy that."

 

His process, as in Adelaide, commences in the morning. The silent warrior awakes, then in his room he visualises — the portrait of an artist in boxer shorts. As his batting suggests, this man prefers method to chance. He will see the bowler in his mind, envision his action, and then barefoot, with bat in hand, take stance and meet the imaginary ball.

 

In the first innings, he is there in total for 594 minutes, searching for harmony between mind and feet, discovering a way to stay in concentration’s embrace. He does not care for statistics, he is not distracted by his nation spellbound, for he says "you can’t be thinking, 'What if I fail?'".

 

"You can’t concentrate for 10 hours, you switch on and off, you push yourself, your mind wanders, you bring it back, you steel yourself. That’s the real beauty, when you win the battle against yourself," he explains.

 

This is the essence of Dravid, waging his silent, private war. He is occasionally bewildered that after he is done, the pleasure of what he has accomplished is not that powerful; for him, "more joy" is found while completing the task.

 

He is in an inward-looking player, an analyser, constantly scrutinising his art, dismembering his innings and emotions into pieces for study. Predictably, he is too intelligent to be at ease with this hero business; he finds it discomforting, exaggerated. He says: "I don’t really feel like a hero, my only qualification is that I come on television more than a nurse or a soldier or a teacher. Anyway, I don’t think sportsmen can really be considered heroes."

 

At the crease in Adelaide, his brain will register heat, applause, scoreboard, partner, but it is the specific bowler of the moment that he is attuned to. That this is Gillespie running in, hair askew, awakens the warrior in him. "The Australians always come hard at you, you’re always in a contest and this makes it easier to concentrate. In fact, when change bowlers like (Simon) Katich come on, you have to focus harder."

 

His second innings, India chasing 230, is more valuable, more arduous; the pressure is stifling and his fine form of earlier days initially deserts him. "I didn’t feel in much control, I had to fight through periods, refocus, reminding myself of what I wanted to achieve. My goal was to not get out, to make it as difficult as I could."

 

He is both calm and desperate, driven by emotion yet aware it is dangerous. "I’ve been playing for seven years and we’ve lost a lot of games, and I was just fed up, and during many periods on Tuesday I kept telling myself I didn’t want to go through that again."

 

His batting is evidence of a careful work ethic, of a player who shares a comfortable companionship with discipline. After the Test, his captain Sourav Ganguly will say on television: "He’s the best role model you can have, because he works so hard, thinks so much." But this is also genetics, this willfulness written into some invisible chromosome. He says his mother, an artist, "is a very determined woman, when she sets her mind to something she does it". Mother does her doctorate in art in her mid-50s and the son takes photographs at her ceremony; of these innings, mother would approve.

 

In the first innings, he plays 446 balls, in the second, 170, so many just watched and left as if unworthy of his bat’s attention. Monks are less circumspect than him, and indeed when he plays it appears he is delivering a sermon on batsmanship. Yet his carefully calibrated approach has a powerful reason. "As much as I get confidence from playing shots, I also sometimes gain confidence from leaving balls, because it gives me an idea of where my off stump is."

 

His batting is not, for some, immediately appealing; it is like a painting, it requires a second look, a considered appreciation. Soon its beauty is revealed, its simple elegance, its clean, classical lines, its divorce from awkwardness, its stylish symmetry. He plays to his own wondrous sheet music. He is owner of more shots than some believe, he is merely fastidious about what to play, but when he delivers, in Adelaide, cover drives of such precise sophistication, it is worth any wait.

 

Polished, fussy, batsmen like him are often eclipsed by the quicker scorers, those with flair and flourish. It scarcely bothers him. "People like to come and watch great shots, and players playing attractively. That’s natural, so would I."

 

But this unpretentious, engaging man is an owner of different virtues, just as precious. As he says: "I don’t have some of the gifts of a Tendulkar or a Lara, but I have other things. I’d like very much to be respected as someone who is courageous and fights and does his best. I enjoy an innings (like the 233 and 72), for it brings out different facets of my character that are dear to me — commitment and discipline and courage." But he knows gifts themselves mean little, in themselves they are inadequate.

 

"The challenge," he says, "is making the best of the gifts you have got. I have learnt this from Tendulkar, who has worked extremely hard to make best use of his gifts."

All his life, even when belittled, Dravid has stayed faithful to these gifts. Years ago, when considered unfit for the one-day team, even told to sandpaper his off spin because it might help selection — a time of great humiliation for him — his response was classic. Then, he told me, he could have either moped and moaned and believed the world was against him, or he could go to the nets and find a way to get better. He chose well.

 

But let us not believe he is all seriousness, some swotting student with no time to look and smell life, because that is not him. Mostly, in fact, if you meet him for dinner, there is a charm and roundness to him that is appealing.

 

Indeed, of all the moments at Adelaide, the one he enjoys more than most points to a man who delights at cricket’s charming surprises.

 

It came around tea on the third day. He had begun the day at 43, V.V.S.Laxman on 55, yet late in the day when he looked at the scoreboard, he noticed with amusement that he, impossibly, had outpaced his usually more fluent friend. You don’t need to see the grin on his face, because he is laughing down the phone when he talks of this: "Yeah, jeez, not a bad effort for a blocker, huh?"

 

No, not bad at all.