Indian batter Rahul Dravid, commonly known as 'The Wall', was renowned for his classy strokes but there was a time when he was given a standing ovation for scoring just a single run.
The incident had taken place during a Test match between India and Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) in 2008. Dravid was batting on 18, and it was then he played 40 consecutive dot balls before his next run.
When he finally managed to get a run to move to the score of 19, the entire SCG crowd gave him a standing ovation and the batter acknowledged it by raising his bat.
Recently, India's Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra revealed that it was this particular knock of Dravid that played a big role in his 2008 Olympics season.
Notably, Bindra had won India's first-ever individual Olympic gold in the men's 10-meter air rifle event later that year.
"I want to talk about one particular innings of yours which had a big role to play in my career by the way. For me, it was your most important innings because it taught me a lot... It was the game where you scored one run after 40 consecutive dot balls," Bindra told Dravid during an interaction in his "In the Zone" podcast.
"It was January 2008. It was the Olympics year. I was there (in Australia) for a fitness camp. And at that point of time in my career I was struggling a little bit to get my first shot off in competition... because I used to be really nervous, my heart rate used to be really high and I used to be impatient sometimes and just go after it quickly and it was mostly disastrous for me.
"So, I watched you in this game on TV. Just showing immense amount of patience for 40 consecutive balls and that taught me so much. So I want to thank you. That innings had a big role to play... in Indian sports history because it helped in that Olympic season," he added.
While Abhinav Bindra lauded Rahul Dravid for that knock, the current India head coach said: "I am glad somebody benefitted from that... It was a bit torturous really for lot of the people watching, even for me."
