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Thousands of tigers in the world, but Dravid…’, check out Ross Taylor's statement on Team India head coach
Recently Taylor has written ‘Black and White’ autobiography. In that book, he narrates an incident involving Rahul Dravid.
Updated : Aug 16, 2022, 03:37 PM IST | Edited by : Ashish Kapoor
 "Ross Taylor on Rahul Dravid")
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Former New Zealand cricketer Ross Taylor got to learn about Indians' love for their cricketing heroes once he went on to a jungle safari with former India captain Rahul Dravid during the Indian Premier League (IPL). Taylor joined Rajasthan Royals from Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2011.
Taylor narrated one incident where he along with Dravid went to Ranthambore National Park to spot a tiger, and how the normal public were more interested in Dravid rather than spotting a rare tiger.
"I asked Dravid, 'how many times have you seen a tiger?' He said, 'I've never seen a tiger. I've been on 21 of these expeditions and haven't seen a single one.' I thought, 'What? 21 safaris for zero sightings.' Seriously, if I'd known that, I wouldn't have gone. I would've said, "No thanks, I'll watch the Discovery channel. Jake Oram had been out in the morning - no joy. There was some baseball game on TV that he wanted to watch so he didn't come with us on the mid-afternoon safari. It wasn't long before our driver got a radio call from a colleague to say they'd found T-17, 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'd hit pay dirt,"
"We pulled up beside the other vehicles, open-top SUVs a bit bigger than Land Rovers. The tiger was on a rock, a good 100 metres 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 as excited to see him as we were to see the tiger. Maybe more: across the globe there are almost 4000 tigers in the wild, but there's only one Rahul Dravid," he wrote further.
Rahul Dravid and Ross Taylor played cricket together in four seasons of the IPL from 2008 to 2011. Both were part of Royal Challengers Bangalore from 2008 to 2010. Then in the 2011 season, Ross Taylor and Dravid were selected by Rajasthan Royals. Significantly, IPL 2011 was also the last season of late spinner Shane Warne.
