Rahul Dravid Reveals the Steve Waugh Sledge in 2001 Kolkata Test
Just like his debut game where his 95-run inning at the iconic Lord’s got overshadowed by another debutant Sourav Ganguly’s century, Rahul Dravid’s monumental 180-run knock in the historic Test at the Eden Gardens against Australia in 2001, perhaps does not get as much credit, as it deserves because of VVS Laxman’s 281-run inning.
But there is absolutely no denying the fact that Dravid’s knock will be on the first pages of Indian cricket’s folklore. India had gone on to win the game against the all-conquering Australian side after being asked to follow-on.
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Dravid recently made a rather interesting revelation about his iconic innings. The former India skipper revealed how he tackled Australian captain Steve Waugh’s ploy to unsettle him, as he walked out to bat with the hosts in a difficult situation. In a bid to mount pressure on Dravid, who has had a difficult series with the bat till then, Waugh greeted him with a sledge, taking a dig at his demoted batting-order.
“In the first three days of the Test match, we were sort of completely beaten. Personally as well, my form was not good. I hadn’t scored runs in Bombay. I hadn’t hit runs in the first innings. In fact, I was demoted to No. 6 in the batting order. In the second innings, when I walked in, Steve Waugh said ‘Rahul No. 6 in this innings, what is it in the next innings? No. 12?,” Dravid said at the Go Sports Athletes’ Conclave in Bangalore on Friday (December 16).
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The sledge, however, did not upset Dravid as it made him realise what was going wrong and he decided to adopt a different approach during the innings.
“It was quite funny because I had reached the depths, I felt so low. I was not in a position to think about the past or about the future. I told myself: ‘I am struggling so much. So there is no point about worrying about what’s going to happen in the future. I said: ‘I am going to just focus on the simplest thing’. And in cricket, it is just about focusing on one ball at a time. I thought ‘let me see how many one balls I can play at a time.’ I was thinking ‘one more, one more’,” he recalled.
Dravid, who is currently coaching the India Under-19 and India A teams, further called himself ‘more a failure than a success’ in a bid to deliver some motivational word for the audience, advising them to learn from their mistakes instead of playing the blame game.
“I played 604 matches for India. I didn’t cross fifty 410 out of those 604 times. If you just do the math, I was more a failure than actually, I was a success.”
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“When we fail, we often tend to brush things under the carpet. We blame someone; we always tend to find an excuse. When you do things like that, you lose an opportunity to fail well. When you fail, you have an opportunity to understand yourself,” he said.
“As sportsmen, we always knew we are bound to fail unless we are a privileged few. We all knew that we had felt the pain of that. But the great people, I have seen have always have found a way to use that positively,” he added.
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