Watch: When Rahul Dravid received a standing ovation for taking a single after facing 40 balls

Rahul Dravid Most Runs in Test

Australia’s premier batsman Steve Smith on Friday showed an insight into how Test cricket can be fun to watch even when there is no run-scoring from the bat. Batting on the opening day of the New Year’s Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), Smith had fans cheering for the very first run he scored against New Zealand.

He took 39 balls and 43 minutes to score his first run of the Sydney Test to get off the mark. The former Australian skipper received a round of applause from the packed SCG crowd for the single that he finally managed to take.

Rahul Dravid had once played a similar dry spell like Smith at the SCG. The right-handed batsman played a knock of 63 off 182 balls which was also his first half-century and his 29th overall before Colin de Grandhomme got the better of him. Ever since Smith consumed the 39 balls in order to get off the knock, Cricket Australia (CA) shared a similar feat previously achieved by former Indian skipper Rahul Dravid.

Dravid received a standing ovation from the SCG crowd for scoring a single run in 2008. Unlike Smith, the former India captain, who has been nicknamed The Wall, was batting at the score 18 when he began his dry run of dot balls. Dravid played back to back 40 dot balls before scoring his next run. He even raised his bat to acknowledge the standing ovation from the crowd.

Smith, meanwhile, is considered the best Test batsman in the world and is often called the next Don Bradman of Australia. He made his Test debut in 2010 and has since then played 72 matches from which he has 7164 runs at an average of 62.84, which includes 26 centuries and 28 fifties.

In ODIs, he has played 118 games, scoring 3810 runs at an average of 41.41, including eight centuries and 23 fifties.