Rahul Dravid may have a long list of accomplishments against his name but when he sets foot in St. Joseph’s Boys High School, he simply — and proudly — sees himself as an old boy.
The former India batsman was back at his alma mater on Saturday to inaugurate the Loyola Sports Complex, a Rs.16-crore facility that houses a swimming pool, a table tennis hall, indoor cricket pitches, a basketball court, snooker tables, and other activity rooms.
“In my cricketing career, I’ve been asked to do various things on various occasions to fill in for people. I’ve been asked to open the batting, keep wicket and even captain the team at times. But I’ve never been asked to actually replace the Chief Minister of Karnataka to do anything,” Mr. Dravid began, to loud cheers. For, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who was also scheduled to be part of the event, eventually did not make it. Alongside the 42-year-old on stage were a number of other St. Joseph’s old boys with fine sporting achievements to boast — Sandeep Somesh (hockey), Trishul Chinnappa (golf), Anup Sridhar (badminton), Hakimuddin Habibullah (swimming), Austin Almeida (basketball), and M. Arvind (swimming). Also present were R. Roshan Baig, Minister for Infrastructure Development, and N.A. Haris, Shantinagar MLA. “When I was here 25–26 years ago, we had to go all the way to Webb’s ground after school to practise for the cricket tournaments,” Mr. Dravid said. “Today, with a beautiful new facility, the boys will just have to climb a few steps to walk up to the indoor cricket centre to practise,” he said. “So many of my friendships were actually built and nurtured on this very ground 26 years ago,” he said. “Those bonds exist to this day because we played sport together.”
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He added, “You always follow how your school does in sporting events — it never leaves you. Even today, when I wake up and look at the sports pages of the newspapers, I look for St. Joseph’s — be it the hockey team playing the Centenary Shield and the Fr. Eric Vaz Shield, or the cricket team playing the Cottonian Shield and the KSCA tournaments. It brings back some great memories. It brings back the memory of me playing hockey on this field with Sandeep Somesh and Anil Adrin. Watching Sandeep and Anil play hockey made me realise that taking up another sport was probably better.”