Rahul Dravid went on to cement his legacy among the legends of the game, but it was important for him to earn the respect of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman.
Unarguably one of the greatest servants of Indian cricket, Rahul Dravid’s name is written in history books with golden letters. The man who went on to earn the nickname of ‘The Wall’, went on to achieve some unbelievable milestones for the Indian team, before also winning the T20 World Cup 2024 as the national side’s head coach. Though there’s not a single cricket fan in the country who doesn’t have the utmost respect for Dravid, the man himself has revealed that he was very keen on earning praise from the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, and Sourav Ganguly during the early days.
During his appearance on a podcast, Dravid recalled how much he learned just by sharing the dressing room with the likes of Tendulkar, Laxman, Ganguly and even India’s current head coach Gautam Gambhir.
“I don’t think I was copying them, but certainly learning things from them as well, not only Laxman. It made my game a better game, sharing the dressing room and partnerships with Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly, VVS and even Gautam Gambhir for a while. You are learning from these guys, watching them prepare, play certain shots and how they go about doing certain things. And you are picking up stuff. You are being challenged and pushed by them,” Dravid said during an episode of the Haal Chaal Aur Sawaal Podcast with Ashish Kaushik.
All of these are among the legends of the game, especially in India, scoring plenty of runs across formats. Dravid, who went on to carve a legacy for himself in his own way, explained that he wanted to earn respect from these star players but never wanted to copy them.
“You want to earn Tendulkar, Laxman, and Ganguly’s respect. You want them to say ‘ok, this guy can also play. He deserves to be in this room with me’. You want to earn that, and that comes with performance and doing things. That comes with putting runs on the board and playing in difficult conditions or situations. So that in itself was a motivation. So you pick all of this up from them. And then they understand your game. You have conversations. You are chatting with these guys. So there is no doubt that all of them made me a better player, helped me achieve my potential, and I hope I did a little bit of that for them as well.”
