Rahul Dravid bids adieu to test cricket - the end of

an illustratious era
by Rupen Ghosh on Friday, March 9, 2012 at 3:09pm
Rahul Dravid, the wall, and one of the finest Indian
batsmen to emerge in India since Sunil Gavaskar and G
Viswanath, is biding adieu to test cricket today, and
borrowing from soccer, would be hanging up his
cricketing boots, forever. Curtains are coming down on a
very illustrious career, whose knocks, big and small, have
all come on crunch occasions, adding to Indias wins,
unlike other greats whose tons and tons of runs only
added to their personal milestones and were mostly
inconsequential in the teams overall fortunes. Ever since
Dravid, an epitome of copybook cricket, appeared on the
cricketing firmament during that series in England in the
mid-nineties of the last century, he has displayed
cricketing technique of the highest order, almost near
perfect, sound temperament, great judgement, maturity
and sagacity and of late , great oratory to confirm the
adage of being a 'thinking cricketer.'Dravid, an ever
gentleman cricketer, is quite clearly the finest batsman to
face fast bowling on hard, pace-friendly tracks and has
negotiated rising deliveries quite impeccably, something
which cannot be said about many of his colleagues, who
have rightly earned the nickname of being flat track
bullies. Despite decisively participating in most of the
team victories, mostly overseas, he remained an unsung
and unheralded cricketer, and, unfortunately, even in his
hour of glory, the credits went to more media savvy
cricketers. Even the media never had much fascination
for this silent performer, quite understandably as millions
of rupees were riding on other more flamboyant
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cricketers, and the ever gentleman he was, Dravid never

showed any emotion and continued toiling for the team,
quite selflessly and for a considerable period, doubled up
as the wicketkeeper too.
Some of his most memorable knocks which come to mind
are: 233 vs Australia at Adelaide, 2003, 180 against
Australia at Eden Gardens, 2001 in that legendary
partnership with Laxman, 270 vs Pakistan, 2004, 148 at
Leeds, 02, 148 against SA, Jo,'burg, 1997, 81 vs WI,
2006, 190 vs NZ, 1999, 112 against WI, Kingston, 2011,
217 vs England, 2002 and many more.
What he perhaps lacked in flamboyance, liveliness and
raw energy, he more than made it up with grit,
determination, perseverance, technique and levelheadedness to grind the opposition bowling, if not to
dust, to sheer frustration of bowling at him. He was not
exactly a swashbuckling and dashingly aggressive
batsman - in fact, he was once dropped quite early in his
career, from the one-day squad for slow and
unimaginative batting - and was quite unable at one time
to rotate the strike, pierce the fielding and accelerate the
scoring. But with hours and hours of practice, he
developed the attacking streak and at the end of the day,
was a very dependable one-day batsman too, with more
than 10,000 runs or so to his credit.
Ayaz Memon, the noted cricket writer, has paid glowing
compliments to this quintessentially gentleman cricketer,
and I reproduce some excerpts: 'By common reckoning
among peers, former players and experts, Dravid is
amongst the great batsmen of all time, worthy of being...
considered along with Hobbs, Hutton..., the three Ws,
Kanhai, May, Cowdrey, Merchant, Hazare, Gavaskar,
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Miandad to name a handful from the distant past. In

the current era, debate about who is the best batsman
has largely centred around Tendulkar, Brian Lara and
Ricky Ponting but I think this debate is incomplete if
Dravid
(Kallis
and
Sangakara
too)
are
not
included." Dravid will remain a classical batsman, whose
style, technique, temperament and demeanour reminds
us of great players of yore, of those days of the glory of
test cricket. In the long line of succession of legends of
the past - Hutton, Hammond, Cowdrey, Bill Edrich, Denis
Crompton, Tom Graveney, Ken Barrington, the three Ws of
Weekes, Worrell and Walcott, Rohan Kanhai, Hanif
Mohammed, Manjrekar, Merchant, Gavaskar and even the
stodgy Boycott and many others - Dravid truly was their
successor. The test cricket will not the same without him.
The test cricket, which is actually the real cricket and
where one could find the real test of skills, technique and
temperament, remains, however, his forte and it is here
he came to Indias rescue on countless occasions and
alongwith Laxman could be credited with the maximum
number of victories notched by India, at home and
overseas, under challenging conditions, where batsmen
with lesser technique and batsmen with tons and tons of
runs against their names, faltered and capitulated, so
abjectly, without any fight, whatsoever. With Indian
batsmen regularly crumbling and chickening out, it was
Dravid, who earned the nickname of The wall , really
stood anchor and deflected all attacks, in his own
inimitable manner, not demolishing them, but grinding
them to a halt, frustrating them to indiscretion, till,
unfortunately, age took its toll on him.It would not be an
exaggeration to proclaim that in Indian cricket, after
Gavaskar, there has not been another purist like Dravid.
India was fortunate to have the wonderful quartet of
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Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman serving the

cause of cricket with such distinction at the same time
and now the triumvirate or trinity would also be a thing of
the past. Alas, time and tide wait for none and Dravid has
taken the right decision to retire at the right moment,
when the world would still be saying, why now, instead
of raising the constant din of when would he be retiring