Former India captain Rahul Dravid had evolved from a wicket-keeper batter at the age-group level in Karnataka to an all-time great Test No. 3 for India. Even in India colours, Dravid had stepped up as the makeshift glovesman behind the stumps, but his legacy as one of the finest slip fielders in the game also remains firmly in place.
Dravid held the world record for most Test catches for nearly 13 years since his retirement until England’s Joe Root surpassed him during the recent Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. The legendary batter had once put down his snappy reflexes in the slips to a fruitful stint with legendary Australia cricketer and coach, Bob Simpson, who passed away aged 89 on Saturday.
Dravid’s evolution from wicket-keeper to the slips
“I wasn’t a good enough bowler to be able to contribute with the ball. I tried my best. So I sort of figured out ‘How do you contribute to the team? What do you do?’. I mean, sitting there as a batsman, what can I do really well, and one of the things was, if I catch well, it’s a contribution. You feel you’re involved, you’re playing a part,” Dravid had once said on the Lessons Learnt with the Greats podcast.
“I had to work on it, I don’t think I was as much a natural, but I had to practise a lot of slip catching, and one of the really good pieces of technical advice that I received early on was to ensure that the weight was on the balls of my feet and ensuring that my balance was really good as a fielder, and ensuring I got into a really good position.”
Dravid recollected how a stint with Simpson between 1998-1999 helped him ace the slip fielder’s technique and went on to break Mark Waugh’s world record to become the first designated fielder to collect 200 Test catches. Simpson, who coached Australia to the 1987 World Cup title, joined the Indian national side on a consultant basis only two years after Dravid made his Test debut.
How Simpson helped Dravid
“I remember Bobby Simpson came and spent some time with the Indian team in 1998/99 and he took us through a lot of slip catching drills. And one of the things he stressed on a lot was having your feet bent a little bit so that you could get your weight into the balls of your feet. That was something I took to heart and practised a lot.”
“Even watching someone like Mark Waugh, the way he stood, in some ways I used to watch that. It was a really good Australian slip-catching unit: you had [Mark] Taylor, Waugh, they were really, really good, and you used to sort of watch them.”
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An out-and-out trier, Dravid had said that his 210 catches in 164 Tests was a product of diligence, exhorting that slip fielding was an art that got better with practice.
“Slip catching, a lot of it, is about practice – the more practice you can do, the variety of practice you can do – it’s not mindlessly taking catches. I think catching [to] spinners was a very important thing for India, about a hundred of those catches are off two spinners – [Anil] Kumble and Harbhajan [Singh], I took about 60 of them playing in India – we do prepare turning tracks!”
Simpson’s contributions
Regarded as one of the pioneers of modern-day Australian cricket, Simpson’s transition from a great leader and astute slip fielder to coaching ensured that he unearthed a horde of stars during his coaching tenure.
As one of the great slip fielders of his time, he is credited with training drills that helped Mark Waugh become one of the great catchers and more importantly turn David Boon into one of the sharpest short-leg catchers of all time. Simpson played 62 Tests for Australia from 1957 to 1978, scoring 4,869 runs at an average of 46.81, including 10 centuries and 27 half-centuries. He captained Australia in 39 Tests and was their head coach for 10 years from 1986, helping them win the 1987 World Cup in India, the famous 1989 Ashes in England and an epic away series win in West Indies in 1995.
