With a strong technique, he has been the backbone for the Indian cricket team. Beginning with the reputation of being a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, he was dropped from ODIs as he was slow in making runs. However, in a period of his career he began consistently scoring runs in ODIs as well, earning him the award of ICC player of the year. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements has now become a tribute to his consistency. Dravid has scored 26 centuries in Test cricket at an average of 55.11, including 5 double centuries. In one-dayers though he has an average of 39.49, and a strike rate of 71.22. He is one of the few Indians who average more at away matches than at home, averaging over 10 more runs a match abroad than on Indian pitches. As of 9 August 2006, Dravid's average in overseas Tests stood at 65.28 as against his overall Test average of 55.41, and his average for away ODI stands at 42.03 as against overall ODI average of 39.49. In matches that India has won, Dravid averages 78.72 in Tests and 53.40 in ODIs.

Dravid's sole Test wicket was that of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test against the West Indies during the 2001-2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs. He has since delegated the wicket-keeping gloves, first to Parthiv Patel and more recently to Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Dravid is now purely a batsman, one who has averaged 63.51 in matches played since 1 January 2000.

Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is the present world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively. Uniquely, each of his five double centuries in Tests was a higher score than his previous double century (200*, 217, 222, 233, 270).

Also, Dravid is the current world record holder for the highest percentage(%) contribution of runs scored in matches won under a single captain, where the captain has won more than 20 Tests.[35] In the 21 Test matches India won under Sourav Ganguly's leadership, Dravid played his part in every single one of those wins, scoring at a record average of 102.84 and piling up an astonishing 2571 runs, with nine hundreds - three of them double-centuries - and ten fifties in 32 innings. He contributed nearly 23% of the total runs scored by India those 21 matches, which is almost one run out of every four runs the team scored.