Just keep yourself calm: Rahane recalls Dravid’s advice

The Indian vice-captain Rahane was going to a rough patch before the West Indies tour in 2019. The middle-order batter used to get starts but failed to convert his starts to a ton. This certainly was worrying him.

Rahane, in an interview recently, revealed that talking to Rahul Dravid made him feel better about himself.

“I think spending time at the NCA before the West Indies tour and that chat I had with Rahul bhai (made me better). He told me: ‘You should go out there looking for that challenge, don’t worry about getting those hundreds.’ Because personally I know that I was scoring runs. I wasn’t scoring those big hundreds but I was actually contributing for my team getting 70s, 80s and 90s.
“He just told me to go out there and enjoy my batting and hundreds would come automatically and that’s what I did. He just said: ‘You are a good player; just keep yourself calm while batting. You don’t have to prove to anyone. Just go out there and be yourself.’ From then on I have been just trying to play fearless cricket, think about the situations, be aware of what’s going on in those particular moments and react accordingly.
“When I was getting out in the 70s and 80s I was actually thinking about my 100, my personal milestone. A lot of times it happens that you are close to a hundred on 80-odd and you start thinking about playing cautiously. So at some level, my game used to get affected, my attacking instincts were getting suppressed. But now even if I am in the 90s, if the ball is there to be hit I will hit it. If the hundred is to come, it will happen,” concluded Rahane.

During the WI tour, he was one of the top performers and he continued his good form to the SA tour as well where he made a ton.