The Ashes
Rahul Dravid could call it quits soon!
Legends are never born; they are made through toils of hard work, sweat in practice sessions day in and day out. Rahul Dravid truly is one. Even as the talk of him ready to call it quits from Test cricket grow louder, it is learnt that the former Indian captain could hang his boots from Test cricket on the last day of the Adelaide Test on Saturday. Remember, he already retired from ODIs last year.
A series whitewash, calls for his blood from everyone has made not only the purists sad but also worried. Not long ago, Dravid led the charge with blistering centuries at the Old Blighty. A total of 194 runs at a below-par average of 24.25 is not the way Dravid would have wanted to bid adieu to the game which gave him everything. And the right-hander returned the favour in kind. Dravid gave cricket his all.
He practiced hard, ran harder and played the game the hardest. Adelaide was the same place where Dravid notched up his maiden double century against Steve Waugh’s men during the 2003-04 tour Down Under.
More than centuries being scored from his willow, it is the margins of the victories that has pleased Dravid over the years. Be it Adelaide, Headingley or Rawalpindi, Dravid has been up for the task.
In a team sport, Dravid has made many sit and notice his sheer demeanour of playing match-winning knocks one after another. He would trudge to the crease as much like a man on a mission. He would consolidate, create gaps and pierce them with aplomb. Dravid was the creator of India’s destinies on innumerable occasions. But, like any movie on screen, the end has to come. In Dravid’s case, it has proved to be a tumultous one.
During the current series against Australia —-his defence has failed him completely. A part of me still can’t believe that Dravid may not be in the Indian whites again.
It is a disbelief that has engulfed me for the past few hours and I somehow, somewhere feel that a part of me has been lost, lost forever.
