In just my previous post, I had written about Dravid’s career reaching towards its end. But I did not know that it will end so soon. Today Dravid announced his retirement from international and domestic cricket. Surely that is a big step taken, unfortunately this is what media pressure can do to you. But the loss will have to bared entirely by the team and his fans. Unfortunately, we will never see him play for India again. However, he will play in IPL this year, but surely the Great Indian Wall will be missed on the field.
Here is the complete article covering his retirement from the ESPNcricinfo site:
Rahul Dravid announincing his retirement
Rahul Dravid’s retirement from international cricket was announced at his home ground, the Chinnaswamy Stadium, in a function room filled with more than 200 people. Family, team-mates, friends, KSCA members, officials and journalists had gathered – as did fans watching a live broadcast on national television – to mark the end of a remarkable career and a “reassuring presence” in the Indian team. Dravid, the second-highest run-getter in the history of Test cricket, possibly the last of India’s classical Test batsmen, was a cricketer who successfully straddled the old school with the new age, becoming a pivotal figure in the growth of India’s Test team in the 21st century.
The press conference began on schedule and, within three-quarters of an hour, Dravid left the room and international cricket as he had walked in. Swift, smooth, business-like, and, on Friday, to the sound-and-light burst of camera flashbulbs. The significance of Friday’s announcement will be understood only six months down the line, when India play Test cricket for the first time in 16 years without the most reliable one-drop in their history.
The decision to retire was not sudden, he said; the period of contemplation had lasted over a year as he assessed his game series after series. The disappointment of the Australia tour had not given him any ‘eureka’ moment around his decision to leave the game. “I didn’t take the decision based on one series… these decisions are based on a lot of other things, it’s the culmination of a lot of things. I don’t think it’s based on what happened in the last series. For each one it comes differently, for me it’s come with a bit of contemplation, a bit of thought, with friends and family.”
On his return from Australia, Dravid spent a month, taking out the “emotion” from the overall result in order to “look at things dispassionately,” he said. At the end he said, “I came to this decision and when I came to it, I was very clear in my mind.” It had, he said, been easy as it was difficult, that he had known “deep down in his heart” that it was time for the “next generation of the young Indian cricketer” to take over.
It was tough to leave “the life I have lived for 16 years and, before that, five years of first class cricket. It [cricket] is all I have known all my grown life … it wasn’t a difficult decision for me because I just knew in my heart that the time was right, and I was very happy and comfortable in what I had achieved and what I had done. You just know deep down that it is time to move on and let the next generation take over.”
Dravid entered the function room straight into a scrum of photographers, looking almost apologetic at having caused such a fuss. He was dressed in his India blazer and seated on the podium next to BCCI president N Srinivasan and his former team-mate, captain and now KSCA president, Anil Kumble. The walls around him were lined with portraits of Karnataka’s Test players, in the front row of the audience were members of his family, team-mates and the cricket community of the city.
He began by reading out his statement, his voice steady as he listed the people who’d played a part in every stage of his career – coaches, selectors, trainers, physios, officials, team-mates, family, even the media. He ended with the Indian cricket fan. “The game is lucky to have you and I have been lucky to play before you… My approach to cricket has been reasonably simple: it was about giving everything to the team, it was about playing with dignity and it was about upholding the spirit of the game. I hope I have done some of that. I have failed at times, but I have never stopped trying. It is why I leave with sadness but also with pride.”
With the statement ended and applause breaking out, Dravid looked at his wife in the first row. There was both relief and calm on his face and something other than television lights reflecting in his eyes. After the contemplation and the deliberation, the conversations with people he trusted, it was over.
Dravid became the first of India’s senior-most cricketers – Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman being the others – to quit the game after a season of speculation surrounding their future. His decision follows a poor tour of Australia but he enjoyed a prolific run through 2011, scoring five centuries – including four in the Caribbean and England. However, he is set to captain Rajasthan Royals in the upcoming IPL season.
The biggest surprise of the afternoon, however – far more unexpected than even the finality of Dravid’s retirement – was to follow. It came from BCCI president N Srinivasan: a man famous for an undemonstrative, glacial public face made an emotional and heartfelt speech. He spoke extempore of an “irreplaceable” cricketer, his voice wavering more than once. Srinivasan recalled having watched Dravid “grow from the days he played club cricket in Chennai, from the Ranji Trophy days … to the time he captained India”. Dravid, he said, was an “ambassador for the sport, for the Indian team and for India”.
“None of us really want to see such great players go away, we like to think they are permanent,” Srinivasan said. “I think that deciding when to retire is possibly the hardest decision Rahul has ever faced. It is not easy to say adieu…”
Kumble called Dravid one of Karnataka’s “finest cricketing sons” and spoke of his “reassuring presence” for India in the dressing room and on the field. It was Kumble who got Dravid to eventually crack his first smile of the afternoon, when he said the KSCA would now “expect to see you often in the association wearing the administrative hat.” There were also a few tips on life after retirement, Kumble telling Dravid that apart from being busier “with exceptional demands made on your time, your ability to say no will be challenged like never before”.
Sitting in the audience was Dravid’s former team-mate Javagal Srinath, the current KSCA secretary, who had walked into the room before the event to check if the arrangements were in order. Dravid’s immediate future includes six weeks of the IPL and he offered no clues as to whether he would take up a post-retirement life as coach, administrator or commentator. “I truly believe that some time away from the game will be good for me, I’ve played the game for 20 years I’ve lived in a cocoon, in a surreal world, this world has been away from reality in some ways.” He did say though that because he loved routines, his return to the real world could include his new routines that involve dropping his sons off at school and shopping for groceries.
Among Dravid’s contemporaries, both Kumble and Sourav Ganguly retired just after Test matches and Dravid was asked whether he had not wanted to end his career that way, walking off a field of play. “Just to keep playing for the sake of playing just one Test match, I didn’t think was right.” He needed to play, “for the right reasons – to win Test matches for India. I’ve done that for 16 years and I feel the time was right, I’ve had a great run. I have given this some thought … at the end of the day when a player has to go, he knows he has to go and I didn’t feel the need to drag it on longer [in order to have a farewell Test].” Dravid was replying to questions in three of the four languages he speaks, taking particular pride in receiving special applause from the back of the room for working his way through a fairly long answer in Kannada.
Along with his wife, sons and brother, Dravid had walked onto the Chinnaswamy field for a short while just before he came in to speak to the media. The stadium was his finishing school before his graduation to Test cricket, and the adjacent NCA nets turned into a trusted training ground over the past decade where Dravid had always showed up early to work on his game.
Now retired, he will finally be free of the 7am gym and nets sessions. But what about the pure love of just batting? Of striking the ball with bat? Wouldn’t he want to steal into the nets just for a hit or two? Dravid paused for a moment, smiled and then said: “Probably in the quiet. I’ll come very late at night.”
On the day he left the international game, this became the perfect final image of Rahul Dravid. Not that of the obdurate competitor in the arclights of cricket’s ‘surreal’ centre. But of the “reassuring presence”, of the craftsman in the quiet of dusk, of the man who never stopped trying.
I am surely not the biggest fan of Rahul Dravid, but still he is definitely one of my favorite sportsmen. I found an article on yahoo, as a letter to Rahul from one of his fans like me and I found it so touching that I am putting it here on my site as a tribute to Rahul Dravid.
Dear Rahul,
This is not going to be easy. But I will try. One sentence at a time.
Congratulations. Is that appropriate? That’s what people at work say when someone quits. And, despite the anguish surrounding your decision, this is supposed to be a happy day. At least I would like to think of it that way.
I expected you to finish in Adelaide. The same Adelaide where, in 2003, you found gold at the end of the rainbow. The same Adelaide where another colossus, Adam Gilchrist, retired four years ago, his wife and children sitting among the press, his voice breaking towards the end of each sentence, tears trickling down his cheeks as the press conference wound down.
But the Chinnaswamy Stadium fits well. That’s where it all began. And that’s where it ends. Like Gilly, you leave with your family and former team-mates watching over your retirement announcement. And like him, you leave amid breaking voices and teary eyes.
There is a constant temptation, especially when a cricketer retires, to draw comparisons. We live in a world that loves definitives. It frowns upon ambiguity. We want to determine your exact location in the pantheon. I will refrain from this. I am sure you are tired of being compared to other great Indian batsmen. And I am not about to bore you.
But I must tell you something that has bothered me for a long time. You are too conveniently slotted as a specialist batsman. I disagree. That’s too simplistic. For me, you are an allrounder – not in the way our limited imaginations defines an allrounder but in a broader, more sweeping, sense.
I find it hard to think of a more versatile cricketer. You were one of our finest short leg fielders. You were, for the most part, a remarkable slip catcher. You have opened the innings, batted at No.3, batted at No.6 (from where you conjured up that 180 in Kolkata). I’m sure you have batted everywhere else.
You have kept wicket, offering an added dimension to the one-day side in two World Cups. You even scored 145 in one of those games. You captained both the Test and one-day teams. Sure things didn’t go according to plan but you were a superb on-field captain. More importantly you were India’s finest vice-captain, an aspect that is often conveniently forgotten. Jeez, you even took some wickets.
There’s something unique about this. In Indian cricket’s hall of fame, you can proudly share a table with Gavaskar and Tendulkar. But you can also share one with Kapil, Mankad and Ganguly – cricketers who excelled in more than one aspect of their game for an extended period of time.
The only people who will understand this are those who you played with. The only people who will begin to appreciate your value to the side are those who you propped up. Which is why it is not the least surprising when Tendulkar said yesterday, ‘There can be no cricketer like Rahul Dravid.’ Hell yeah. It’s too far-fetched.
Talking about Tendulkar, you know my best moment involving you two? Adelaide again. 2003 again. Damien Martyn c Dravid b Tendulkar 38. Ripping legbreak, spanking cut, screaming edge, lunging right hand, gotcha. That was magic. Pure magic. Swung the game. Ignited the series.
What else will I remember? Hmm. That shirt of yours immaculately tucked in. How did you manage to keep it tucked in every single time? I’ll remember the way you chased the ball to the boundary line, as if you were competing in a hundred-meter race. I’ll remember the intensity with which you studied the pitch before the game, like a geologist, scraping the surface with your palms, examining the grains of sand, gauging the direction of the breeze. You loved all these tiny details, didn’t you?
There is a general perception that you have not got the credit you deserve. I don’t know if that is accurate. I wonder if you feel that way. But just you wait. Wait for India to play a Test without you. Wait for the team to lose an early wicket, especially on a challenging pitch. You’ll hear a gazillion sighs, sighs filled with longing. India 8 for 1 and you sitting in his living room, sipping tea and watching TV. I’ll be surprised if you don’t palpably feel a nation’s collective yearning for a sunnier, glorious past.
But even that I may be able to somehow handle. What I won’t be able to come to terms with is not watching you bat. Over the years few things have given me as much joy as watching you construct an innings, hour upon hour, brick upon brick.
Here I must mention what the great American author, Edgar Allan Poe, once said about the importance of punctuation.
It does not seem to be known that, even where the sense is perfectly clear, a sentence may be deprived of half its force – its spirit – its point – by improper punctuation.
An innings of yours would be incomplete without the punctuation marks that you masterfully employed along the way: the focussed leaves, the immaculate dead-bats, the softening of the grip, the late strokeplay, the ducking, the weaving, the swaying, the head totally still, your eyes always on the ball, the focus, more focus, still more focus, even more focus.
There is no point watching an innings of yours stripped of all this. I’ve cursed all these TV producers who create highlight packages with fours, sixes, your raised bat after each fifty, a jump after a hundred, more fours, more sixes and done. Finished. Poof. That’s supposed to be a summation of your innings.
It’s the same with all these photographers who click away and the websites that use those photos to create galleries. None of them even begin to portray the painstaking manner in which you create these pearls. None of them can capture over after over of graft. There is nothing more exhilarating that being exhausted after watching you bat. But there is no technology that can capture that, no software that can simulate it.
So if my grandson were to ask me about your batting, I would be lost. The only way anyone can begin to understand your craft is by watching you bat through a whole day, by experiencing your pain. There are no short cuts.
There are a million links that pop up on YouTube when I type ‘Rahul Dravid’. All of them show you batting. None of them contain your essence. There is no Rahul Dravid in there.
That’s sad. But maybe that’s also a good thing. I was fortunate to be able to watch you bat. My grandson won’t be as lucky. He’s just going to be born at the wrong time. Let’s go with that. It’s much easier.
As I said, this is supposed to be a happy day. It’s the memories that matter. You’ve left us a world full of them.
So long, Rahul. Adios. Ciao. Auf Wiedersehen. Tata. Bye. Bye. Olleyadagali guru.
And thank you. It’s been a privilege.
Yours faithfully,
Sidvee
TREATISE 