CHENNAI: He has been paid the highest of tributes. The quintessential team man. The technician supreme. The gentleman cricketer. Rahul Dravid has been all this and more. But among all the admirable qualities about his well-crafted batsmanship the one aspect for which he has not been given enough credit is his slip catching. It is a matter of pride that Dravid not only holds the world record but also became the first to take 200 catches in Tests. One is sure that taking catches has given Dravid the same pleasure as scoring all those runs over a 16-year career.
Wally Hammond, a trendsetter in great slip catching, became the first to take 100 catches in Tests. He ended his career in 1947 with 110 from 85 matches. Another slip catcher Colin Cowdrey set the new mark in 1968. Bobby Simpson took slip catching to another realm as his final figures – 110 from just 62 Tests – will confirm. Among those with more than 100 catches his ratio is the best.
Over the years, Cowdrey’s record passed on to other greats such as Greg Chappell, Allan Border, Mark Taylor and Mark Waugh. But an Indian was nowhere in the frame even as they held major batting and bowling records. It was not that there was no tradition of great Indian fielders. Think of outstanding Indian fielders and the names that come to mind are: Hemu Adhikari, Rusi Surti, the Nawab of Pataudi, S Venkatraghavan and Eknath Solkar, who made himself a specialist and fearless fielder at short leg. In recent times there have been others like Ajay Jadeja, Robin Singh, Md Kaif and Yuvraj Singh, who have been quite versatile and two outstanding current fielders are Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina. But there have also been outstanding Indian slip fielders and the names of Vinoo Mankad, Polly Umrigar and Ajit Wadekar roll off the tongue naturally. But it was Sunil Gavaskar, who became the first Indian to take over 100 catches in Tests finishing with 108 from 125 Tests.
It is inevitable that the world record has to be with a specialist slip fielder for obvious reasons and it is to the credit of Md Azharuddin, the finest all-round Indian fielder that he finished with 105 catches from 99 Tests.
Almost from the time he played his first Test in England in 1996 Dravid has been fielding at slip and while he has been an invaluable asset to all the pacemen he has also taken numerous catches off Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. He has pulled easy and difficult catches, leaping or diving showing remarkable reflexes. He holds the Indian record of most catches in a series – 13 against Australia in 2004-05.