Kamath’s Cafe

Saturday, January 21st, 2006

The ground beneath his feet

The date was 25th June 1983. Rahul Dravid was in Indore for his thread ceremony. He recalls watching the World Cup final on a black and white TV set. India beat the West Indies, the seemingly invincible defending champions, by 43 runs.

At the tender age of 10, Dravid learnt Goliath was beatable.

What is his most special memory of that day? “After India’s victory, my cousins and I went out and had ice-cream.”

Ice-cream. Maybe, just maybe, that’s the secret of his by now legendary cool. Through the rise and ebb of the team’s fortunes, through personal triumphs and tribulations, he has stood firm, resolute, unwavering.

In 2003, he crafted an epic 233 against Australia in Adelaide. After batting for 594 minutes, he said the innings would be of consequence only if India won. On the final day of that match, India were six down and looked like choking but Rahul stood in the way, stayed unbeaten and took India to her first win on Australian shores in over two decades.

When Sachin Tendulkar got his 10,000th run in Test cricket, Rahul, who was at the other end, walked up to Sachin, congratulated him warmly and added, “the real target is 15,000.”

Rahul Dravid is a man who refuses to get carried away. This is how he’s always been. Picture a quiet little kid with his ice cream, an island in the middle of the whirling national hysteria surrounding a World Cup win.

A renowned finisher of matches, Rahul finished the year 2005 with a flourish, winning eight out of 11 One Day Internationals and one Test series. Cricket done, he completed a host of commercial and administrative assignments before heading home to Bangalore. He consented to an interview on the flight but made it clear that once in Bangalore, he was clearly on family time.

At Mumbai airport, there is chaos. Flights delayed due to fog, irate passengers yelling, business channels gasping about the Sensex, news channels blaring about the Government’s left turn, flight announcements trying to shout over the din.

Suddenly, a hush. Dravid has entered the boarding area. He has this calming effect. His presence brings with it a certain reassurance. Maybe the fog will lift now. Maybe the Sensex will stabilise. Maybe the Left will come around on the privatisation of airports and FDI in retail.

“It’s only a game,” he says as the aircraft soars. Even at 30,000 feet, Rahul Dravid’s feet are firmly on the ground. “I love the game, I am passionate about it. While I am playing, I take it very seriously. But in the larger context, let’s face it, it’s only a game.”

He says pilots have an important job since they are in charge of people’s lives. Ditto for surgeons, he says.” Surgeons save lives. Cricketers and movie stars are possibly given overdue importance due to the visible nature of their work. But honestly, there are so many people who are doing so much for the country and so much more needs to be done. Healthcare, education, infrastructure, these are the real issues. Cricket is not everything. It’s just a game.”

Balance. It’s been inculcated in Rahul from an early age. Born to a food scientist father and a mother who taught at Bangalore University, young Rahul was clearly told that he could play cricket only if he got good grades in school. Rahul applied himself to studies and cricket with near equal intensity. He stood first in class and also made the school team.

While his brother went on to do his engineering and MBA, Rahul did his BCom and began a journey towards becoming the CEO of a team that excelled in India and overseas. Much like the heads of globally successful technology companies from Bangalore, Rahul dwells upon the values of teamwork, best practices, benchmarking globally and the ability to use ones success to make a difference to society.

Given that Bangalore almost breathes systems and technology, it is hardly surprising when he speaks of the importance of the system. “The system will always win. Australia will continue to be a formidable team because their system is so strong. They have just seven domestic teams. 110 of the best upcoming players play on very good wickets. There is a professional set-up even in domestic cricket. Australia may not always be dominant. It will certainly be hard to find players like McGrath, Warne and Gilchrist. But Australia will always be a formidable team. Even England is following the same model.”

And what of India? “We need to improve the quality of wickets and training in smaller centres. Domestic teams need to realise their goal is not only to win domestic cricket but win at an international level. Ranji wickets may win matches but they are not doing any service to cricketers. We need to replicate international conditions. If you look at players like Dhoni and Sehwag, they have come from smaller centres. With improved facilities, we can discover more of their ilk. In any case, bigger cities lack playing grounds since most open spaces are being consumed by developers.”

What about the view that Indians as a rule lack the aggression to compete at the highest level? That our curd rice diet makes us relatively timid? “There are different kinds of aggression. The outwardly show of aggression is a western concept. The eastern concept of aggression is more internalised, more about controlling the mind and training it towards a goal.”

While much newsprint and air time has been consumed by Sourav’s ouster from the Indian team, no one has bothered to mention how Dravid was dropped not so long ago from the One Day team and how he reinvented himself, started to keep wickets (a role he had last performed in the under-17 team) so that the team had one more all-rounder. It helped the balance of the team because kept wickets in the World Cup.

Ah, the World Cup. That’s where it all began in 1983. At the back of Rahul’s mind, the Pakistan series and every series from here on, will be a building block to the big one next year.

Maybe we should stock up on the ice cream. Because this is a man who carries a billion hopes. He will probably carry us to the Cup.

But he will not get carried away.

This piece was published in The Times of India in January 2006 even as Dravid was scripting a 410-run opening partnership with Virender Sehwag in the Lahore Test.

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