Defensive batting is a ‘fair assessment’ of my style, admits Rahul Dravid

The Director of Cricket Operations at National Cricket Academy, Rahul Dravid was one of the greatest batsmen of his time and is known as “The Wall” for his defensive style of batting that let him stay for a long time on the crease. He played 164 Test matches amassing 13288 runs at an average of 52.3 for India, while in ODIs, he played 344 games and accumulated 10889 runs averaging 39.2, while also captaining the side.

In a conversation with Sanjay Manjrekar, during an ESPNCricinfo Videocast session, Dravid - who has a career strike of 42.5 in Tests- admitted that he would’ve loved to play a little quicker. However, the legendary batsman also admitted that his style of play was actually one of his biggest strengths. 

“I did take a lot of time to score runs(chuckles) no doubt about that. I would’ve liked to play a little quicker I’m sure. I think it would be a fair assessment [that I was a defensive batsman]...in the sense that I kind of figured out what’s my best way of scoring runs, of contributing to the team, making an impact in the game, or making a winning contribution in a game. And if that meant occupying the crease for a long time, blunting out the ball to face difficult conditions so that things got easier later on then I saw that as my job and took great pride in it and do the best to pursue my goal,” Dravid told ESPNCricinfo.

“Would I have loved to bat like Virender Sehwag? I would love to have batted like Sehwag, those shots, but maybe I didn’t have that kind of talent that Viru had. Hence, I tried to do my best with what I had. Maybe my talent wasn’t strokeplay, my talents were determination or concentration. I got the best out of that and I sort of tried to work on those strengths and I’d like to believe that I became more of an attacking batsman or a more aggressive batsman for the fact that I played more than 300 ODIs.”

Growing up, Dravid admired the batting of the legendary Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath and wanted to adopt their style. However, the legendary Indian batsman admitted that looking at Manjrekar and Sachin Tendulkar in the early 90s, he did want to play those shots as well but he also said that he didn’t have it in him for that level of stroke-making and hence stuck to what was his natural game.

"So I, let’s be honest, I wanted to be a Sunil Gavaskar or a Gundappa Vishwanath, they were my heroes. And watching the likes of you[Sanjay Manjrekar] bat in the early 90s against Pakistan and England that was sort of a transformation from a Gavaskar to Manjrekar and I sort of looked up to those kind of batsmen I did enjoy the powerful shots of Tendulkar, I did want to become like him but I didn’t think I would be able to play like that."