Rahul Dravid, a renowned Indian cricketer, was born on January 11, 1973. He is regarded as one of the best batsmen of all time.
Rahul began playing cricket at 12 years. He later represented the state in the under 15, 17 and 19-cricket teams. Dravid’s playing style and technique inked his name among the best batsmen in cricketing history. At the start of his career, he was majorly a defensive batsman who was confined to Test Cricket. He would later struggle in his career and was dropped due to low strike rate from ODI squad. His career had a renaissance when he began consistently scoring ODIs runs, which led to his readmission to the Indian team and later earned him the Player of the year award from ICC.
Dravid Rahul playing style and cricket match statistics
His playing style gave him the nickname ‘The Wall’. In his career, he scored 36 centuries at an average of 53.19 in Test cricket, which also includes 5 double centuries. In ODI, he had an average of 39.49 with a strike rate of 71.22. He stands out as the few Indian players that have better Test average away than at home, his matches averages almost five more runs on foreign pitches. By September 23, 2010, Rahul had averaged 55.53 on foreign pitches compared to 50.69 average at home in Test matches and ODI home average of 43.11 with 37.93 abroad. As a team player, Dravid holds the world record for the highest percentage of runs ever scored in matches under a single captain. The record is an average of 102.84 runs, with 900s scoring 2571 runs, three of which are double centuries with ten 50s in 32 innings. In 2000, he was named Wisden Cricketer of the year mainly because of his defensive batsman playing style.
Controversies involving Dravid Rahul
Rahul was found guilty in January 2004 of ball tampering in the ODI match with Zimbabwe. Clive Lloyd, the Match referee, adjudged that it was a deliberate offence although Rahul denied the incident’s intent. According to the World Cricket, governing body ICC code of conduct, players should not apply anything on the ball apart from saliva and sweet. In regards to the incident, he was fined half the match fee and there were issues with those who bet with Betfair promo code on results. Multan declaration was Rahul’s most debated decisions when he took the captaincy when Sourav Ganguly was injured. It was a time that games played had mixed results and some of the games lost were attributed to batsmen playing badly while others were blamed on Dravid’s decision-making. It was during his era that India did not qualify for DFL cup final and the skipper, Dravid Rahul was heavily criticized.
Achievements of Dravid’s Rahul
In his career, he won the Test Player of the year, and he was named among the top-five Wisden Cricketers Almanack in the year 2000 at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony. He becomes the first Indian and non-Australian cricketer to earn Bradman Oration.