Rahul Dravid has been the cornerstone around which some of India’s famous overseas Test wins were scored during Saurav Ganguly’s reign as the captain. Alongwith Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis, he was the most prolific no. 3 batsman of the past decade or so and in the Indian context, one of the dependable batsman of all time. His game has always revolved around a watertight technique; no wonder then that he earned the nickname, ‘Wall’ as bowlers around the world found it tough to get past his defences, especially in Test cricket.

Dravid made his Test debut against the English at Lords on the tour of 1996. While Ganguly who also made his Test debut in that very game went on to score a glorious 100, Dravid fell short of the landmark by 5 runs. His 1st century eventually came against the Proteas at the Wanderers on the tour of 1996-97 and for his contribution of 148 and 81 in the two innings, he was also declared the ‘Man of the Match’. The highlight of Dravid’s career has been his batting on overseas tours; be it his 148 on a seaming 1st day pitch at Leeds, or his gritty 233 against the Aussies at Adelaide, or his other magnificent double hundreds against England at the Oval or versus Pakistan at Rawalpindi, they’ve all come at crucial junctures, most of which resulted in significant Indian victories. He enjoyed a golden period of batting during the season of 2003-04 as a result of which he picked up 2 trophies at the inaugural ICC awards; Best Test Player of the Year and the most important of them all, ‘Best Cricketer of the Year’. ‘Jammy’, as he’s known to his close friends has also gone past the 10,000 run mark in Tests making him only the 3rd Indian batsman to do so, after Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar.

Even in the one-day format of the game, Dravid’s left his mark and is one of the few batsmen to have scored more than 10,000 runs in it. Infact, he was the highest run getter in the 1999 World Cup that was played in England. Also, he’s been one of the game’s finest slip fielders of all time and he now holds the world record of pouching the most number of catches by a non-wicket keeper.

After Saurav Ganguly was dropped from the captaincy, Dravid was asked to lead the side and his reign at the top for nearly 2 years is often remembered for all the wrong reasons. With Greg Chappell as the coach of the side, Dravid was often criticized for not being authoritative enough as people often thought that it was the Australian who ran the show from behind the scenes. Nonetheless, he still led the team to two very important overseas Test series wins; against the West Indies in 2006 and then against England in 2007. Dravid also became the 1st captain to lead India to a Test win over South Africa on their home soil.

Often described as a quiet and an unassuming person, both on and off the field, one of the best compliments for the man was perhaps made through the title of a book written on him. Devendra Prabhudesai wrote a biography on the former Indian captain and named it, ‘The Nice Guy Who Finished First’!