A letter bidding adieu to Rahul Dravid

Rahul Dravid

“Alas! Have I failed to keep up my promise?” – Saying so, I felt like kicking myself having realized that I had indeed watched a match from a meaningless tournament. I have never really enjoyed seeing T20s, to be frank. I do watch a few matches of IPL just to while away the time. But hardly have I ever found it to be entertaining. So, it should not be impossible for anyone to guess that champions league T20 is not something which I have enjoyed watching. In fact, I have not seen a single match from this haphazardly formatted tournament, since its inception.

This year though, it is your team (Rajasthan Royals) which has made it to the Champions league by the virtue of having finished third in Pepsi IPL, alongside Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. So, how can I resist myself, hanging on to my resolution, and forfeit the league totally? Your presence in the event made me break my vow and watch you bat in what was your team’s second match of the championship which was against Highveld Lions. As soon as I saw you wielding the English Willow on the TV screen, my otherwise nimble fingers did go inactive and I was unable to browse through channels from my remote. My fingers finally unfroze when I saw you getting holed out to the covers, driving the bowler on the up. It was then I woke up to my consciousness recognizing that I had faltered in adhering to my pledge of not watching this weird tournament in my life.

Oh wait! Then something pricked my mind. An inner voice told me that I have done nothing wrong and my conscience was quite clean. What I watched might have been a T20 match but the man who I saw batting was, after all, you. I mean it was you, who did not even know, despite playing several IPL matches, as to how to slog. All the shots which you hit during your 31 run cameo were taken right out of the text book. In short, you played a Test match innings in a T20 match, however, not compromising on your team’s scoring rate. Each of your innings in T20s has always been tailor made for purists’ delight and has remained thoroughly exhilarating. So, when you bat, even a T20 innings looks like one from the longer version of the game. I, therefore, was able to convince myself that I had not forgone my promise made to myself. Even in gully cricket you would ensure that the copy book shots are played to perfection. Once you made your exit from the batting crease, I knew that the stage was set for ballistic missiles to be unleashed and so, in no time I turned the channel off, having no intention of wasting my time any further.

My admiration and love for your batting and hard work did not begin overnight. As a matter of fact, we are remotely connected due to a couple of reasons which you may not be aware of. Representing “India Cements” you used to play in our college grounds whereas I did my article ship as a part of my college course in India Cements. It was way back in 1998, when you were still a new comer in international cricket, did I first see you in my college. Your elegance and technique soon enraptured me having watched you live so many times. Being a fan of yours for so long, I can always vouch that your dedication has remained unflappable forever, no matter wherever you have played. Talking of your simplicity and modesty – the two other qualities which you have been known for – I could see it quite clearly whenever I had approached for your autographs in private. But you were just a new entrant to the Indian team back then and so your show of humility did not really surprise me at that point. What has been more admirable is the way you have maintained your composure and stayed down to earth even after having accomplished so much in your international career. You have not allowed your success to get into your head and that is why you are still viewed as one of the most respected sportsmen on earth.

There was a time when you were wildly criticized for your slow strike rates. More so, you were also dropped from the national side momentarily in 1998 when you took 21 balls to score a run before getting dismissed in an ODI match against Bangladesh. Most of the cricket fans were sarcastic of your inability to mobilize the run rate in ODIs. But the way you have adapted yourself to the shorter version of the game in the years which followed was quite amazing. By the end of your career, the entire world was left stunned seeing you finishing your career with more than 10000 ODI runs. Earlier you used to hit the ball too hard only to find the fielders. Later on, you had learned to accelerate the scoring by developing some cheeky shots on your repertoire like nudges and pushes so that the team did not fall behind the required rate. Doing so, you became one of the dependable batsmen in ODIs too. The same people who laughed at you for your slow strike rate, I am sure, would have been ashamed of themselves, reading your stats, for having underestimated you.

The whole world recognizes you as one of the best players to have ever played the game. An encomium of that sort does not reach anyone pretty easily. The recipient of such eulogies should have devoted his mind, body and soul whole-heartedly towards the game to be named so. When you first toured Australia during 1999-2000, loads were expected of you particularly after your scintillating performance during the World Cup in England in which you emerged as the topmost run getter. Starting with the first match of the tour where you had to return to the pavilion without disturbing the scorers, nothing went well for you and you could not even go past 100 runs from all the six test innings put together. It was such a miserable tour for you and people soon began to raise their doubts on your ability to play on fast bouncier tracks. A normal human being would have given up by then when he goes on to tour the same place again. But you turned out to be a phenomenal human as you made the next tour down under exclusively yours by scoring more than 600 runs in the four test series. You must have put in a lot of hard work going onto that tour to overcome your short comings which you experienced in 1999. You had always remained the student of the game till you retired and that is the reason you were able to score runs irrespective of conditions and formats.

Rahul, you have been a real gem throughout your international career which spanned for over 16 years. After the ongoing Champions league, we will never be able to see you bat again. Your exodus will leave the game in the lurch and a true ambassador of the sport will be sorely missed. I, for one though, believe that you can contribute more to the game. A person like you can appear only once in a millennium and so as long as you stay happy and healthy I request you not to orphan the game. You can do so many wonders as an administrator and help the game to function smoothly. The game needs you one way or the other. A person, as clean and honest as you are, cannot easily be discovered in a nation which has more 110 crores of people residing. Fortunately for the country, you are readily available and so we need not search for anyone else from outside. All I want from you is to take the game, which you have played for very long, in the right path. No matter what the future holds for you, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the best in your endeavours.