“People Were As Excited To See Rahul Dravid As We Were To See Tiger ”– Ross Taylor Narrates A Story From His Visit To Ranthambore National Park

Legendary New Zealand National Cricket batter Ross Taylor has narrated a story from his visit to Ranthambore National Park involving legendary India National Cricket Team batter and current head coach of Men In Blue, Rahul Dravid.

Ross Taylor shared the dressing room with Dravid during his Indian Premier League (IPL) stint with the Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the 2011 edition of the marquee T20 league.

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Writing in his autobiography ‘Ross Taylor: Black And White’, Taylor narrated a story from his and Dravid’s visit to the Ranthambore National Park. Taylor revealed that the people around him and Dravid were excited to see the Indian batting legend as they both were thrilled to see the tiger.

“I asked Dravid, ‘how many times have you seen a tiger?’ He said, ‘I’ve never seen a tiger. I’ve been on 21 of these expeditions and haven’t seen a single one.’ I thought, ‘What? 21 safaris for zero sightings.’ Seriously, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gone. I would’ve said, ‘No thanks, I’ll watch the Discovery channel.’

“Jake Oram had been out in the morning – no joy. There was some baseball game on TV that he wanted to watch so he didn’t come with us on the mid-afternoon safari. It wasn’t long before our driver got a radio call from a colleague to say they’d found T-17, a famous, tagged tiger. Dravid was thrilled: 21 safaris without seeing as much as a tiger turd, but half an hour into number 22 he’d hit pay dirt,” Taylor wrote, as reported by stuff.co.nz.

“We pulled up beside the other vehicles, open-top SUVs a bit bigger than Land Rovers. The tiger was on a rock, a good 100 metres away. We were stoked to see a tiger in the wild, but the people in the other vehicles immediately aimed their cameras at Rahul. They were as excited to see him as we were to see the tiger. Maybe more: across the globe there are almost 4000 tigers in the wild, but there’s only one Rahul Dravid,” he wrote further.

Cricket in New Zealand is a pretty white sport – Ross Taylor

The 38-year-old Ross Taylor, who announced his retirement from international cricket earlier this year, made some big revelations in his autobiography. He talked about facing racism from his teammates and said that “cricket in New Zealand is a pretty white sport”.

“Cricket in New Zealand is a pretty white sport. For much of my career I’ve been an anomaly, a brown face in a vanilla line-up. That has its challenges, many of which aren’t readily apparent to your teammates or the cricketing public,” Taylor wrote.

“In many ways, dressing-room banter is the barometer. A teammate used to tell me, ‘You’re half a good guy, Ross, but which half is good? You don’t know what I’m referring to’. I was pretty sure I did. Other players also had to put up with comments that dwelt on their ethnicity. In all probability, a Pakeha listening to those sorts of comments would think, ‘Oh, that’s okay, it’s just a bit of banter’. But he’s hearing it as a white person, and it’s not directed at people like him. So, there’s no pushback; no one corrects them,” he stated.

Also Read: “Rajasthan Royals Co-Owner Slapped Me Across The Face 3 Or 4 Times After Getting Out On A Duck” – Ross Taylor On An Incident With Rajasthan Royals Owners

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