Want to make it big in cricket? Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar has a tip: follow 'The Wall' Rahul Dravid.
"He [Dravid] is a perfect role model for youngsters. He has set a great example for all of us to follow. We are all trying to follow that path," Tendulkar told cricket fans after releasing a biography on Rahul Dravid, authored by sports writer Vedam Jaishankar, at a function in Bangalore on Tuesday.
"He is a solid batsman and one of the top players of the world who I really admire," Tendulkar said, adding the first time he saw Dravid was in 1994-95, at Rajkot, "when common friend Amol Mazumdar, pointing to the Karnataka lad, said he is the one to watch out for... he is going to get runs and is going to make it big."
"Then I had said, 'He is good. We have to see him.' Now the whole world has seen him," said Tendulkar, to applause from the audience, which included former India cricketers Sadanand Vishwanath, Venkatesh Prasad and Dodda Ganesh.
Tendulkar was all praise for Dravid's dedication to the game, saying the vice-captain is "very sincere and very honest".
Dravid, recalling watching Tendulkar in an under-15 tournament in Cuttack, in 1986, where he had good knock for West Zone against South Zone, said he set himself Tendulkar's standards to be a good cricketer.
"I still remember coming from Bangalore to Cuttack as a 13 or 14-year-old hotshot, scoring a lot of runs in school cricket, thinking that I was a very, very good cricketer. But then I saw the young boy [Tendulkar] from Bombay. He was absolutely brilliant.
"I realised that day I really wanted to play cricket and wanted to be a good cricketer and these are the standards I have to set for myself," he said, adding those are some of the tidbits mentioned in the biography.
"Totally embarrassed" by the praise showered by the speakers, including sports writer Suresh Menon and St Joseph's School principal Father Michael John sj, Dravid said much of what was said by them is exaggerated.
"If you do some things nicely or well by the time you are 30 years old, you make it sound that you have done absolutely fantastic. All these things said about me by a lot of people are possibly exaggerated. So when you read this book, read everything with a pinch of salt," he said.
Father John said Dravid is a loyal friend and great ambassador who visits the Home for the Aged and Spastics Society to meet children whenever he has the time.
"There are young people here who can take him as a role model; a role model with tremendous achievement and hard work," he said.
'Rahul Dravid: A Biography' is published by the New Delhi-based UBS Publishers Distributors Pvt Ltd.
