A post dedicated to The WALL - The epitome of batting!

Rahul Sharad Dravid is perhaps the greatest ever batsman to grace the game from India, might be next only to Sachin in terms of the statistics. But he is a certain match-winner on his own right. And perhaps, no other Indian batsman has a greater contribution in the matches won by India.

The Beginning

The beginning of the Test career of Dravid (and also, our Dada) was not a good situation for the Indian team to be in, which was on its tour of England. One of their main willow-wielders, Sanjay Manjrekar had been injured, and Navjot Sidhu, the big-time freak, had an altercation with the then skipper, Azharuddin and flew back home. Two new guys in the place of established cricketers taking guard at Lord's wasn't a great situation, trailing 1-0 in the series. But these two came to the party, and how!! Ganguly scored a century (131) whereas the Wall missed out on a well-deserved ton by just 5 runs. In doing so, he became the 25th player to be dismissed in 90s in his debut innings.

Some Records

• Dravid is the only player to score a century in all the ten test-playing nations.
• Dravid was the top run-getter in the 1999 ICC World Cup, scoring 461 runs.
• Has the record for the most number of century partnerships in the history of test cricket.
• Dravid is one among the only three batsmen to hit Test centuries in four consecutive innings. The other two are Jack Fingleton and Alan Melville. Dravid achieved this by hitting scores of 115, 148, 217 and 100* in three successive innings against England and one against the West Indies. Only Everton Weekes, with centuries in five consecutive innings, has achieved a longer sequence of consecutive Test hundreds.
• Dravid holds the record for the most number of catches by a non-wicketkeeper (184, till date) in the world.
• Has the record of not being dismissed on duck for 120 consecutive ODI matches.
• During his captaincy the Indian team broke the 14 match West Indies record for most consecutive won matches in One-Day Internationals while chasing a total. For this 17 match run, Dravid was the captain for 15 matches and Sourav Ganguly was the captain for the other two. This streak was broken on 20 May 2006, when India lost to the West Indies by one run, at Sabina Park, Jamaica.
• He is the fastest batsman in the history of Test cricket to make 9,000 runs. The former Indian captain brought up the landmark in his 176th innings playing against West Indies in 2006 and broke the earlier record of Brian Lara.