NOT DHONI, NOT VIRAT, NOT SACHIN – FORMER KIWI Player Praises This Indian Player

Former Kiwi star player Ross Taylor was all praises for Rahul Dravid recently. During the 2011 leg of IPL, Taylor had an opportunity to share the dressing room with the legends, Shane Warne and Rahul Dravid. During one such incident, he realized how much fandom Indian cricketers enjoy. During one such incident, when Ross Taylor was sitting along Warne and Dravid (the current Indian team head coach) when they visited Ranthambore National Park & instead of the tigers the people around were clicking pictures of Dravid.Taylor asked Dravid, how many times have you seen a tiger?u2019 He replied, u2018I have never seen a tiger. Iu2019ve been on more than 21 of these expeditions and havenu2019t gotten a chance to spot a single tiger.u2019 I thought, u2018What!!? 21 wild safaris for zero sightings!u2019 However, to our surprise our driver got a call from a colleague to mention they’d found T-171, a famous, tagged tiger. Dravid was thrilled, 21 safaris without seeing as much as a tiger turd, but half an hour into number 22 he had hit pay dirt,\We pulled up beside the other vehicles, an open-top SUV, a bit bigger than Land Rovers. The tiger was on a rock, a good 100m away. We were stoked to see a tiger in the wild, but the people in the other vehicles immediately aimed their cameras at Rahul. They were more excited to see him as we were to see the tiger. Maybe more: a across the globe there are almost 4000 tigers in the wild, but there’s only one cricketer like Rahul Dravid, Taylor further continued.Ross has been a star performer in the New Zealand cricket team. He has played 102 T20Is, 236 ODIs, and 112 Tests for New Zealand where he has amassed 1909, 8607 & 7683 runs in the three formats respectively. Taylor was an integral member of the New Zealand team that won the inaugural ICC World Test Championship that beat India in the final in June 2021.