The Wall

The writing was pretty much on the wall (pun completely intended) as six of his last eight dismissals have come by way of being clean bowled. As soon as Rahul Dravid announced that he was to hold a press conference today, it wasn't difficult to guess what was coming. After 164 Test matches, 344 ODIs, 24,000 patiently gathered runs, an astonishing number of catches and, lest we forget, 14 stumpings, The Wall has retired.

One of the true greats, he seemed happy to let Sachin Tendulkar get the headlines, to remain stoic at one end while Virender Sehwag go batshit insane at the other, but he was no less important to that Dream Team of the last decade and more. Moreover, he seemed to shun the limelight away from the field of play. Not for him the armed entourage of SRT, nor the front page headlines when he had a haircut a la MS Dhoni. No swagger or sneer (here's looking at you, Yuvraj), no theatrics, pantomime villainry or Billy Big-bollocks type behaviour. The term 'role model' always sits uneasily when referring to sportsmen, but here is one. He would do anything for the team, including keeping wicket and opening in times of emergency. Team before self every time and, as such, it's difficult to avoid the feeling that his contribution has always been under-appreciated. It began to get the recognition it deserved towards the end of his career, especially in that tour of England when he was the outstanding player of the series, despite being on the end of a 4-0 whitewash.

It remains something of a grotesque legacy that he will continue to play in the pantomime/circus environs of the IPL, his game the absolute antithesis of what t20 cricket stands for, but hey ho. Everyone has to earn a living, right? It also remains a bizarre statistical anomaly that he both made his international t20 debut and announced his international t20 retirement on the same day, a long way north of his 38th birthday.

Of that Dream Team, Saurav Ganguly went some time ago and Dravid has now followed. VVS Laxman surely can't have much longer and Sehwag and Tendulkar are hardly young men. There seems to have been a lack of succession planning and while the like of Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina look good fleetingly in one-dayers, their lack of Test credentials have been horribly exposed by both England and Australia while Gautam Gambhir can only be relied upon outside of the wedding season. The retirement of Dravid denies the younger players the rock around which they can build an innings. They're going to have to start thinking for themselves.

So long, The Wall. If only the next generation of Indian batsmen had cojones like yours.