Writing in his autobiography 'Black And
White', 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.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is one tournament where
overseas players get to mingle with the Indian players, and the competition has
been a big reason why players all around the world get along pretty well. 2011
IPL was the time when former New Zealand player Ross Taylor got to share the
dressing room with the likes of Rahul Dravid and Shane Warne. That particular
edition of the tournament made Taylor understand of how much fandom the Indian
cricketers enjoy and how difficult it is for them to venture out in the public.
Writing in his autobiography 'Ross Taylor: Black And
White', 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," Taylor wrote,
as reported by stuff.co.nz.
"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.
Taylor had retired from international cricket earlier
this year, and he released his autobiography on Thursday. In the book, Taylor
opened up about instances of racism that he faced through his playing career.
He spoke about how it would crop up in dressing room banter and in comments from
some staff members and officials. Taylor, who is part Samoan, said he had been
"an anomaly" for large parts of his career.
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"Cricket in New Zealand is a pretty white sport.
For much of my career I've been an anomaly, a brown face in a vanilla line-up.
That has its challenges, many of which aren't readily apparent to your
teammates or the cricketing public," Taylor wrote.
"In many ways, dressing-room banter is the
barometer. A teammate used to tell me, 'You're half a good guy, Ross, but which
half is good? You don't know what I'm referring to'. I was pretty sure I did.
Other players also had to put up with comments that dwelt on their ethnicity.
In all probability, a Pakeha listening to those sorts of comments would think,
'Oh, that's okay, it's just a bit of banter'. But he's hearing it as white
person, and it's not directed at people like him. So, there's no pushback; no
one corrects them," he continued.
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