Rahul Dravid didn't dwell on a single moment or reach for a highlight reel to explain Rohit Sharma the captain. "Those five overs for me, in some way, encapsulated the whole journey with Rohit Sharma," the former India head coach said at the launch of the book (The Rise of the Hitman), reflecting on the closing stretch of the 2024 T20 World Cup final in Barbados.

Dravid wasn't speaking about the drought-ending title itself, nor the celebrations that followed, but about the phase when the game was slipping and India were staring at the possibility of another near-miss, coming so soon after the heartbreak of November 19, 2023.

The Dravid-Rohit relationship was built on clarity and trust, coach and captain aligned on process long before outcomes came into view. Which is why Dravid's mind went back to the moment when the plan began to fray under a sensational Heinrich Klaasen assault in that Barbados final which had put South Africa on the cusp of a history-making win. "We get into that kind of a position where we sort of have our backs to the wall," he said. "And that's where I thought Rohit showed great calmness, and a great show of leadership."

"Because, he showed, in those five overs, he showed the calmness, he showed great technical knowledge, or tactical knowledge, of understanding that, 'hey, the game's running away from me.' We probably wanted to have [Jasprit] Bumrah and Arshdeep [Singh] to bowl the last two overs, but the game was slipping away from us, and we needed to get these guys back in," Dravid said.

The India legend termed it "great tactical knowledge", the ability to read momentum, abandon rigidity and act early. But in Dravid's telling, the bigger shift was emotional rather than strategic. "There was great camaraderie in the team," he said, "in terms of recognising that no one else is going to be in this when we fight."

"Through his calmness, through his tactics, [he] was able to ensure that everyone fought, right till the very end. Right till the last ball."

That insistence on staying in the contest, even as margins narrowed, was a culmination rather than an improvisation. "It was the culmination of the work that had gone on over the last two or three years," Dravid said. "For me, those five overs showed you why he had the team."

The response around Rohit, Dravid noted, was instinctive. Rishabh Pant helped take momentum away from South Africa by tending to his knee, creating the disruption that eventually allowed Hardik Pandya to dismiss Klaasen. "The team got right behind him. Rishabh [Pant] understood what he needed to do at that moment. Everybody got involved."

And yet, even when meticulous preparation and leadership aligned, Dravid was careful not to reduce the ending to design alone. "And then, of course, you need a little bit of luck, right? To be successful, to be honest with you, sometimes this is a game of inches. You know, Suryakumar Yadav, amazing guy, brilliant guy. You know, of course, the fact that Suryakumar Yadav is in that position [long off], these are, these are really good tactics, right? He's one of our best catchers. Tremendously calm under pressure. So, he's in the right place at the right time. All the time, he's there.

"But still, his ability to keep his leg within one inch of the rope, that's not something you see a thousand times. You do it all the time [in practice]. But it's still an element of luck in that. Like, your leg slips a little bit, you move, your pant touches the cushion, and that's it, sir. And you lose it in the end. I think that you have to recognise that, you know, you have to be also humble enough to admit that sometimes, for me, we were lucky in these situations.

"We were fortunate, we were lucky in some of these things. We have to do the work, we have to do all that is required, but sometimes we need luck. We didn't have it in Ahmedabad. And we had it in Barbados," Dravid said.