His arrival in mid-1996 on the horizon of India's cricketscape could not have come at a better time. Just as a liberalised India was opening up and making giant strides in the world - and just when middle-class Indians, uninhibited and confident, were leaving home shores to stake a claim to the world's treasures - arrived Rahul Dravid to control and steer Indian cricket forward.
Dravid was symptomatic of the mid-1990s India; strongly nationalist and resurgent, deter-mined and passionate, committed and hard-working. Of a middle-class ethos and with a global outlook, Dravid was a product of his time. The away pitches of Australia, South Africa and England did not scare him for he represented a different India, hardly ever insecure. Not as talented perhaps as the other legendary number three, Ricky Ponting, Dravid epitomised virtues which a turn of the century India would need; reliability, reliability and further reliability.
Even when things did not necessarily go his way like in Australia in December-January 2012, his commitment never wavered. He was the first and only Indian at the MCG at 9 am on Christmas day to practise against hundreds of throwdowns ahead of the Boxing Day Test. He would even shadow bat over dinner when things weren't going his way as mana-ger G S Walia later recounted.
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Dravid was symptomatic of the mid-1990s India; strongly nationalist and resurgent, deter-mined and passionate, committed and hard-working. Of a middle-class ethos and with a global outlook, Dravid was a product of his time. The away pitches of Australia, South Africa and England did not scare him for he represented a different India, hardly ever insecure. Not as talented perhaps as the other legendary number three, Ricky Ponting, Dravid epitomised virtues which a turn of the century India would need; reliability, reliability and further reliability.
Even when things did not necessarily go his way like in Australia in December-January 2012, his commitment never wavered. He was the first and only Indian at the MCG at 9 am on Christmas day to practise against hundreds of throwdowns ahead of the Boxing Day Test. He would even shadow bat over dinner when things weren't going his way as mana-ger G S Walia later recounted.
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