SK Flashback: Rahul Dravid walks into the sunset

The venue was his home ground, the Chinnaswamy Stadium; but he was not in the Indian jersey. Instead, he was wearing his India blazers. It wasn’t at a packed stadium, where he had wowed millions of fans during his 16-year long international career, but here were around 200 people in a conference room.

Most of the people present in the room had guessed what was to follow. The announcer used a number of metaphors to introduce the man of the hour - Rahul Dravid. But once the former Indian batsman had the mic, there was no fuss. He began by directly coming to the point and said, “I would like to announce my retirement from international and domestic first-class cricket.”

“Once I was like every other boy in India, with a dream of playing for my country”

The humbleness was there to be seen in his speech. Here was the fourth highest all-time run-scorer in Tests, a man who had scored more than 13,000 Test runs at an average of 52.31. But the lines he said after dropping the ‘R’ word showed that his feet were still on the ground.

He said, “Once I was like every other boy in India, with a dream of playing for my country. Yet I could never have imagined a journey so long and so fulfilling.”