"I felt insecure after being dropped from the ODI team in 1998,” recalls Rahul Dravid
Former India captain Rahul Dravid was one of the greatest of his era. Among his many virtues, the one that stood out was his temperament. However, despite being ‘the wall’ of the team, Rahul Dravid too had his moments of insecurities and felt that he wasn’t good enough.
In a recent chat with former India cricketer and current women’s team coach WV Raman, Rahul Dravid spoke about the times when he felt insecure in the team.
“There have been phases in my international career (when I felt insecure). I was dropped from the ODI team in 1998. I had to fight my way back in, was away from the Indian team for a year. There were certain insecurities then about whether I’m a good enough one-day player or not because I always wanted to be a Test player, was coached to be a Test player, hit the ball on the ground, don’t hit the ball in the air, coaching like that. You sort of worry whether you had the skills to be able do it (in an ODI),” said Dravid.
Rahul Dravid was dropped from India’s ODI side in 1998 because of his strike-rate. But he made a comeback ahead of 1999 World Cup in England and was also the highest scorer of the tournament with 461 runs. He also played in the 2003 and 2007 World Cups.
The money in Ranji Trophy was very poor, says Rahul Dravid
Dravid further went on to talk about the challenges he faced early on in his career, highlighting the cut-throat competition in domestic cricket and how poorly it paid.
“I have gone through many phases of insecurities. Growing up as a young cricketer in India is not easy, there’s a lot of competition and especially in the times I grew up there was only the Ranji Trophy and the Indian team, there was no IPL. Even the money in Ranji Trophy was so poor that there was always that constant challenge."
"You’ve given up a career in studies, I was not bad in it, so I could’ve easily done an MBA or something. I forego that for a career in cricket and if the cricket didn’t work out there was nothing much to fall back on. So there was a level of insecurity at that age. This kind of helps me when I interact with cricketers of this generation. I can understand some of the insecurities that they go through,” said Rahul Dravid.
Rahul Dravid played 164 Test matches and 344 ODIs scoring 13,288 and 10,889 runs