A Rahul Dravid Symphony

Watching Rahul Dravid bat would me make you feel like you are listening to Mozart. Slow paced at the start and each shot built like every half note perfectly mixed around used by the master at the beginning of his symphonies. Most of Dravid’s innings start of like Mozart’s midnight sonata, slow and serene but with a smooth shift of the musical wave. You would many times come across a symphony 25 like innings that would be a stamp of class. The cover drive, the cut and when you watch the pull you know symphony 25 is at its crescendo. But well that’s not what puts him above the rest, rather let me take a Mozart symphony to explain a typical Dravid innings. Well his basic innings structure matches the serenade for winds with the grit in many defensive pushes clear and apt like the midnight sonata. Even a cut to the fence is nothing like Van halen riff, it will just silkily be played with the serenade for winds. Yes there are these few times he moves into the sonata in G, K 301. Again sweet and soothing with a bit of pace at the same time maintaining the quality of every shot. Keeping the quick singles makes his innings like Sonata In C, K 296. It’s similar to 301 but a lot more playful at times mocking the watcher in Dravid’s case and the listener in Mozart’s case. Then comes that innings he played against West Indies at Sabina Park. At pitch like a grave and then he fought it out like Mozart’s Requiem for a Mass. Every ball with the aim to live, every shot so perfect like the notes, hurting and painful but so well placed, so perfectly woven a master class. An appeal made against him was like the backing opera but the music flowing through it all intertwined to pull through with grace even in the end. Probably the only difference is the kind of personalities they are but then the way they play is so similar...