Former Indian captain Rahul Dravid has said that he would pick little master Sachin Tendulkar to bat for his life if given an option.
"The best guy I've played with was Sachin Tendulkar. In terms of quality and class. So I'd pick Sachin, at his best," Dravid told ESPNCricinfo in a light-hearted interview.
He was answering a bunch of 25 questions and gave a few interesting answers to pointed questions.
Dravid conceded that he would love to have the flair of Brian Lara and that he would pick Michael Holding and Jeff Thompson as the two bowlers from an earlier era he would want to face.
"Just for a few balls though and definitely not without a helmet!," Dravid said with a smirk.
"I would have loved to have partnered Sunil Gavaskar. And hopefully, Gavaskar would have gotten out when I was still batting and GR Viswanath would have walked in. That would have been cool. They were my childhood heroes growing up," Dravid answered when posed with the question of which batsmen from the previous era he would have loved to bat with.
The bowler from the current crop who would have troubled him
The biggest complaint of former greats about the modern era is the lack of genuine fast bowlers or fast bowlers who lack the skill the trouble batsmen. However, Dravid picked Kagiso Rabada and India's Bhuvneshwar Kumar as the two bowlers he believed could trouble him from the current crop of fast bowlers.
"If you're counting Indian bowlers, Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) would be quite a challenge. Facing Bhuvi with the new ball with his ability to get the ball to move away and come back in would be a great challenge," Dravid said.
The legend also picked the 91 he scored against West Indies in Jamaica as one of his better knocks and rated it above the 180 he scored in Eden Gardens and the memorable 233 from Adelaide.
Also, he named Roger Federer, the Swiss tennis star as one of his inspirations away from cricket and praised him for the way he carries himself.
He also thanked his parents and named them as his biggest role models in life.
Speaking about the book which had an influence on him, the Bangalore man picked Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.
"It's not the finest book but it is a book that influenced me as a youngster. It is Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. I read it as a 15-16-year-old and [it] resonated a lot with me, with what I was trying to do at that stage in life," he said.
