You develop friendships and you develop the conversations: Rahul Dravid

VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid took 345 catches together combined on the field. Both the legends made the slip cordon of India look unbreakable at all. Whatever flew from the edge of the batsmen’s bat would, on most occasions, be safely grabbed by the one out of the two.

But, standing at the slips can be boring at times. Deliveries come down there very less often and most of the time they have to stand idle. Which means one would easily lose concentration doing no activity other than focusing hardly everytime. So, what did both of these extraordinary fieldsmen of India – VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid – use to do to keep themselves engaged when standing at the slips?

You have a lot of time in the slips, you know it was one of the things. So, if you’re fielding for India, ‘no disrespect to the bowlers’, forgetting a lot of fielding. And so we’re fielding a lot in the slips. And you know, you can’t always discuss cricket all the time. At times, yeah you are discussing cricket,” said Dravid

Dravid then emphasised on the topics that he discussed with Laxman. The discussions ranged from house constructions, electrician, plumbing issues, etc.

“Having a chat about cricket but there are other times when you need to talk about different things. What’s happening at the house? We’d happen to be constructing a house at the same time, at that stage. And, so yeah, some of the conversations were really interesting. You know having issues with the plumbing. The electrician, which kind of electrician are you using, what kind of switches do you think we should use.”

The former Indian batsman further also added that we used to get back into our zone when the bowler starts his run up and mentioned, “So there, but of course we must want people that we would switch back on. Once the bowlers started running and focus on trying to take the catches. But yeah, I think that’s the thing about friendship and being with the same people for such long periods of time, right.”

Dravid and Laxman are known to be very good friends and then he spoke about the relation and friendship he developed with him.

“You develop these friendships and you develop the conversations. And you’re comfortable enough to really discuss so many different things and it’s not just discussing cricket and I think we’d discuss a lot about personal stuff.

“And I think over the years it’s nice to have those kinds of sounding both than people that you can speak to and discuss a lot of things. Then there are some of them who gone through the same situation that you have faced the same or part of same journey as you. And I think that’s where you can get best inside.”