12 Innings when Rahul Dravid broke the myth of being just a Test batsman

3. 109* (124) v West Indies, Ahmedabad, 2002:

India’s hopes of levelling the series took a backseat when Chris Gayle plundered 123 helping West Indies to post a mammoth 324. With no Sachin Tendulkar in the side and both the openers (Ganguly and Sehwag) gone in the first 5 overs, chances of a win looked bleak. But then it was Rahul Dravid, the man you would expect the least from in such a situation, who stepped up.

He didn’t play a swashbuckling innings by any means but it was the perfect one-day innings you would want in such a situation. He held it together and kept one end safe. He batted for 201 minutes that too after keeping the stumps during the first half of the match. The Wall did bat like a wall against a decent West Indies bowling attack. Towards the end, Sanjay Bangar provided just the kind of support that Dravid’s innings needed to finish the chase to perfection. Bangar cracked 57* from just 41 balls to take India home within 47.4 overs.

But the Bangar-magic won’t have happened without Rahul Dravid leading the charge for India by batting through the innings at a decent pace to chase down 325 (India’s second highest chase at that time) with as much as 14 balls to spare when a heavy defeat seemed tough to avoid.