The Great Wall Of Indian Cricket
“My wife and I have built a new home with a lovely garden which houses lovely bamboo trees. I got reading on the Chinese bamboo and learned that the tree takes 5 years, 3 months to grow to its whole height of 80 feet. Yet, for the first 5 years, you only see a tiny green shoot, but in the next 90 days, it grows into a full-fledged tree. But in those first 60 months, it is growing its strong network of roots underground, to support the tree. In an era of instant gratification, we settle for shorter trees, but remember patience has its reward. These are your years of growing that strong network of roots but be sure when you finally achieve your success, people will call it “overnight success”. If only they knew of the Chinese bamboo! “
This is an excerpt from the Timeless Steel’s speech on Patience at the Sharada Mandir School, Goa. Yes, I’m talking about the Wall, THE RAHUL DRAVID!
We all have those celebrities, whom we adore, have high regards for, appreciate everything they are and they do, have a secret crush on, and so closely follow their lives, that they feel like our own. Rahul Sharad Dravid is my person. For people, who have followed him and his career closely, he is sure to be nothing short of an inspiration. His pictures and posters have filled up half my room, and his style and panache, have made me lose my heart to him !
Born on 11th January 1973 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, to a Maharashtrian Deshastha Brahmin family, Rahul Dravid began his cricketing career at the age of 12, and then went on to represent Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. His Ranji trophy debut was made in February 1991.His international debut happened on 3 April 1996 against Sri Lanka, in an ODI, for the Singer Cup.
From there, his career saw many ups, and it had its downs too. Jammy retired from One Day Internationals on 16 September 2011. 9th March 2012 proved to be one of the saddest days for Indian cricket when Jammy announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket.
He holds many credits to his career, like being the only player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries, holding the record for most number of catches taken by a player, a non wicket keeper, in Test cricket, so on and so forth. But sadly for him, he has never received the due recognition that he deserves. Being known as one of the most dependable, sincere and profound batsmen that he is, the wall will never find a replacement. His farewell speech shook many hearts and moistened many eyes. The fact that we, his crazy fanatics, do not get to see more of him, hasn’t registered in our minds yet, and is something that we will always find indigestible. This man, will always remain in our hearts, for making cricket a gentleman’s game. Amen to that !
