Rahul Dravid, the Wall, the Dedication of an Achiever!

“Rahul Dravid never attended classes regularly. He was always seen practicing in the nets. One day he came to class and started writing notes with his gloves on. We were feeling uncomfortable seeing him writing with the gloves.

I don’t know how he might have felt. Everyone was laughing, talking, whispering, Rahul Dravid continued writing for that full hour. After one hour was over, I and Rahul Dravid had a common friend, Adarsh, so he came up to Adarsh and said, ‘Adarsh, Can I borrow your accounts notes because exams are nearing and I haven’t written many notes. So can I borrow it and xerox it and give it to you back’. Adarsh replied ”Rahul ,I’ll give you the notes but could you tell me why were you wearing gloves on?

You came to class wearing gloves and you continued wearing it, you were wearing the gloves even when the teacher was dictating notes, Is it to impress Anupama?(Anupama was the most beautiful girl in their class!).

Rahul Dravid said ”No…no ,she is already impressed, I don’t have to impress her.” ”Then why did you wear the gloves through all this time?” I asked Rahul Dravid said to me something that day which is very interesting. He replied ”You know something Adarsh ,the last two Ranji matches which I played, I had the old gloves and the old gloves were very loose.

So because the gloves were loose, when the bowler bowled , the ball just went past my gloves and it created the snick sound. The wicket keeper caught it, he appealed and both the times even though I didn’t touch the ball, I was given caught behind. I thought to myself ‘ no this can’t continue’ and so ,I bought these gloves and I want to get
accustomed to wearing these new gloves.

I want my hands to sweat into these new gloves. So for the next 48 hours, I will wear these gloves continuously because the next Ranji match which is a semifinal, is in two days. I want my hands to sweat in and get adjusted to the gloves. I am not going to remove the gloves even when I am sleeping, even when I am eating, even when I am coming to class because I want to do well in the next match and I want my hands to be comfortable in those gloves”.

The very next match, that was their semifinals against Saurashtra and he scored a century.

In the finals, Karnataka played against Delhi that year, he scored another century and based on those two performances he got selected for the Indian cricket team which went to England, and surprisingly in the first test match in England, he scored 90 odd runs(England vs India, 2nd Test ) when Sourav Ganguly scored century and the rest as they say is history.