I was half asleep when a friend of mine called me late at night and asked "Hey did you check the news?". I thought "Oh my god! have they reintroduced covid travel restrictions again or did they discover a more contagious variant of covid or did South African riots escalated or did the Taliban started massacring people". I was thinking about all sorts of negative scenarios. Today's media feeds us too much negativity, isn't it? I said hurriedly "No! No! what happened?". He replied, "A miracle just happened".
From his voice, I could sense that he was jubilant. I had a sigh of relief more than anything. I took a deep breath and asked curiously "Great! what is it ?". His reply made me dumbfounded and angry. He said, "India just won the Lord's test match". Yes! unbelievable, he woke me in the middle of the night to tell me India had just won. I never like when someone wakes me up in the middle of my sleep. It makes me extremely grumpy. I didn't want to vent my anger on him. So I laughed and said very sarcastically "Thank you so much for waking me up to tell this very important news".
He was too excited to understand neither my anger nor sarcasm. I know he is a great Indian fan, I understood how much this victory meant to him. He continued speaking jubilantly for the next 10 mins, he explained how India snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, how Virat Kohli has now become the fourth successful test captain in the world, how India is going to reach great heights under Kohli's captaincy and how Kohli's aggressive captaincy along with his competitive spirit positively impacted the team mindset. I'm sure even Indian coach Ravi Shastri wouldn't have praised Kohli this much. Then he wished me goodnight and put the phone down.
I couldn't sleep after that. I was contemplating about the victory and whether Virat is solely responsible. I recalled everything that happened to the Indian cricket team over the past few years. Then I realised Virat Kohli is not the man who is behind this success. A true architect of this victory is hiding behind the shadows and no one talks about him. Yup! the man behind the success was Rahul Dravid.
This contemplation made me realize the two most important traits of a leader. The first thing we need to understand is "Leadership is not a status, it is a state". When Rahul Dravid retired everyone thought, he would either be a commentator or he would take up some national coaching position in India. But to everyone's surprise, he announced that he wants to be the coach of the Indian A team and the Indian Under 19 team.
Those two positions have no status or fame attached to them. No one remembers the person who coaches those two teams since all eyes are focused on the national team. So a lot of people thought that Dravid is wasting his talent and time by making a wrong call. But it is this decision of Dravid that made India an unbeatable team in the world. Soon after he assumes duties as a coach, he worked closely with young cricketers imparting his knowledge about playing international cricket. It enabled India to develop a great pool of young players who are capable of performing at the international level.
It was because of this bench strength, India was able to sport two different national teams at two different venues such as Sri Lanka and England at the same time. It enabled the Indian team to remain in the UK for a longer period before the start of the series hence allowing them ample time to adapt to English conditions. If it wasn't for Dravid, the Indian team would have struggled to adapt to English conditions due to the reduction of practice time.
Then I realised this wasn't the first time this year that India was able to beat the opposition when nobody expected them to win. When India toured Australia this year. India lost the first test match and was humiliated for being bundled out for 36 runs. When Kohli left for India after this loss for personal commitments, literally everybody in the cricketing fraternity and fans assumed that no way India can bounce back from this defeat especially without Kohli. So everyone predicted that Australia is going to whitewash the series 4 -0.
The captaincy for the rest of the series was given to Rahane who was groomed by Dravid when he played for India A and Rajasthan Royals. Rahane led the team from the front with a brilliant knock of 112 runs to register victory at Brisbane and levelling the series. To make things worst, going into the last two test matches the Indian team suffered multiple injuries and the playing squad was heavely depleted. But, due to covid quarantine rules, they weren't allowed to bring in any additional players from India. So the Indians were forced to play several uncapped players including players like Natarajan who was originally included in the squad as a net bowler.
Even after going in with the players who had minimal experience, the Indian team fought hard and drew the third test match at Sydney and beat Australia in the 4th test match at Gabba. Gabba was considered an Australian fortress. No team was able to defeat Australia at Gabba for the last 32 years. But this young inexperienced Indian team with players mostly groomed by Dravid did the unthinkable as they managed to beat Australia in both Brisbane and Gabba to clinched the series 2-1. I still remembered what Sachin tweeted after the game about how well each young player rose to the occasion and performed. "Every session we discovered a new hero" he said.
The series win against Australia made me realise the second very important leadership trait, "A true leader will create more leaders". Thank you, Dravid for being a living example of a great leader. We all can learn a lot about leadership from you.
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