“I was still always never going to be like Viru or Sachin” – Dravid looks back on his career and reveals the reason behind his longevity

Current team India head coach Rahul Dravid, was one of the most prolific batters of his era, not only in India but also around the globe.

He had scored 13288 runs in tests since his debut in 1996. In the same year, he made his ODI debut too and went on to score 10889 runs. Coming at no 3 position to bat is one of the hardest tasks to do in Test. Dravid has done this with tremendous brilliance over the period of time.

In a recent podcast ‘In the Zone‘, with India’s first individual Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra, Dravid has uncovered how switching off from the game helped him mentally.

Dravid said that looking back to his career, managing his mental energy is one of the important reasons behind his longevity in his career and in terms of performance.  He used to expend a lot of energy, even when he was not playing, thinking about his game, that would reflect on his game. He needed to refresh and almost find a life outside of cricket to be mentally ready for the game.

The former Indian captain also added that he realized that he never would be like Virender Sehwag or the great Sachin Tendulkar. Sehwag used to find it much easier to switch off because of his personality outside of the game. But he knew that he needed to find a way to switch it off but it was the mental side of the thing that you need to help yourself. If you do all the gym and practice sessions but couldn’t switch the mental pressure off, it would be hard for anyone to perform at the highest level for a long time.

He concluded by saying that once he started recognizing that three or four years after starting his career, he started to make an effort to switch off a lot more and it helped him a lot.