Editor's Pick

DAVID MUNDEN / POPERFOTO / GETY IMAGES
01 April, 2012

HERE, RAHUL DRAVID RETURNS to the Lord’s dressing room in 1996, having scored 95 in his first Test innings. This was a performance of aggressive defence and determined offence; among his introductory strokes was one against the England bowler Dominic Cork, who ran in at an angle to Dravid and propelled the ball at the batsman’s off stump. It stayed true to its course for only a moment before swinging away from Dravid very quickly. The bat, however, made contact with the ball mid-swing, sending it past fielders through covers. The stroke looked very nice then, but replays revealed just how magnificent it really was. Suddenly it wasn’t about the runs, but how he had managed it. To play a shot of that sort required the highest levels of anticipation, coordination—the classic cover drive is among the most complicated bursts of technical action in any sport, and this was to a ball curving away—and balance.

It wasn’t easy. In his speech at Bradman Oration, Dravid mentioned his one similarity with Sir Don Bradman. “He was, primarily, like me, a No 3 batsman. It is a tough, tough job,” Dravid, the first player to get 10,000 runs at that position, said. And just like the stroke played that day many years ago, the significance of his career became clear to us when we looked back and looked closely at what he had really done.