Dravid Retiring ?

flash23

flash23

Adept
<
Very sad, such a fantastic career is having such an awful ending. Really hope he reconsiders his decision as he is still better than the the so called "better" and "younger" folks.

NEW DELHI: India's batting stalwart Rahul Dravid is likely to announce his retirement from Test cricket tomorrow, bringing the curtains down an illustrious career which made him the second highest run-getter in the longer format till now.

Although there hasn't been any official confirmation of the news but the BCCI today sent a media release about Dravid holding a joint press conference along with president N Srinivasan at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium tomorrow afternoon.

"Mr. N. Srinivasan, President, BCCI, and Mr. Rahul Dravid will address the media at 12:30 pm on Friday, 9 March 2012, at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru," the release stated.

The 39-year-old Dravid had a disastrous tour of Australia where he scored only 194 runs in eight innings at an average of 24.25. Even more disappointing was that Dravid popularly known as "The Wall" was bowled in six out of the eight innings as the Australian pacer Ben Hilfenhaus repeatedly breaching his defense with ease.

There has been intense speculation about Dravid's impending retirement ever since he failed with the bat during the Australian tour.

Dravid had already announced his retirement from ODI cricket after the away series against England when he was surprisingly recalled in the shorter format due to his stupendous performance in the Test series where he scored three centuries in four matches.

One of India's greatest ever Test players, Dravid had scored a whopping 13,288 runs in 164 Tests at an average of over 52 which made him second highest scorer behind Sachin Tendulkar. He has hit 36 centuries and 63 half centuries with 270 against Pakistan being his highest score.

He also has a very impressive ODI record where he had scored 10,889 runs at an average of shade less than 40. He has 12 centuries and 83 half centuries in the shorter format.

Under his captaincy, India won away Test series in the West Indies as well as England but had a disastrous 2007 World Cup where they were out in the first round.

Dravid also captained in 25 Tests, of which India won eight and lost six. He guided India to their first Test victory in South Africa.
Click to expand...

Source: http://timesofindia....ow/12184786.cms
 
Dravid shouldn't have retired as of now. He was the best man on the England tour, in the entire side. Agreed that the Oz tour was a debacle for him, but dravid still has ~1 year and impress his legacy upon critics.
 
yeah, good choice by him. best to retire when you're in top form. sachin should take a cue from him and retire too. better to retire when everyone's calling him god, than to retire when the bricks start coming towards him when he'll loose his touch eventually in coming months.
 
Should have retired 2-3 years back. People still call Gavaskar retiring early. Sportspeople should retire at a time, when age is not in the side, but form is. Retire when people still love you, wish you play two more years. Long live "the wall".
 
There is a point in retiring at a high, but there should be a suitable replacement available at that time.

Look at Srinath, when he retired there was Zaheer rising. Not that the player should always look out but the mgmt should groom some one to take up his place all they are doing is play a series, if he performs keep him otherwise throw him. There is no trust or second chance at all.

Coming to the recent test debacle well there wasnt even a single good performance, so its unfair to blame a single player just because he is a senior and has a big reputation.
 
I don't get the whole retire at a high logic. Yeah, if you really care about the immediate reputation then retire on a high. If you feel you can still give your best to your team then keep achieving victories for your team then keep playing till you feel like it. I'm sure Sachin will do that too. I'm going to terribly miss watching Dravid frustrate opponents with ease in white clothes. But yeah, his time came. Damn it
<
 
He retired when he felt right !

And to those who think he should have retired years ago well there are lots of cricket experts in India.

Always knew he would retire just like he came
<
.

Will miss you Rahul Dravid . Still Today you are a lot better batsman then the current generation.
 
Still dada's replacement was yet to find now dravid,bcci was in no mood to find young player and to groom but they are busy conducting ipl.

But we should respect his decision, one of the most technically strong player and he will be missed for sure.

Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk
 
One of the BEST Test cricket player ever I have seen. What a player.. Thanks for being part of Indian Cricket team Sir Rahul Dravid. I will miss his game. I always loved to watch is innings.

Anyways, he did the right thing at right time. No matter how Ausie Tour was, he is the best test cricketer no doubt. I still remember Dravid + Laxman game @ Eden Garden, Kolkata against Australia. Aussies were crying so badly.
<
 
Now Dhoni and BCCI will have real fun with no Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman on cusp of retiring.

I wonder who will stand up to teams like England and SA @away considering they have bowling attack far better than the Aussies. Also our bowling is also no better, ours is not an attack like Pakistan which can get away with substandard batting performance.
 
Yes dravid was specialist in getting very few runs in max deliveries he can consume.

I remember one of his innings where india crumbled down to 38/4 and dravid was playing for 3 runs off 28 deliveries. And he got finally out for 9 off 56 deliveries. Thats the true dravid.
<
 
Dravid made 13,288 runs in 164 Test matches, second only to team-mate Sachin Tendulkar's 15,470 in Test history.

He made his Test debut as a 23-year-old at Lord's in 1996 and amassed a world record 19 century partnerships with Tendulkar. He has been involved in 80 century partnerships with 18 different partners.

On two separate visits to England he hit three centuries, a feat achieved by only one other batsman - a certain Sir Donald Bradman - and averaged 68 over four trips.

Dravid is the only man to score Test centuries in all 10 Test-playing nations, and also holds the record for the most outfield catches in Test cricket, with 210.

In 344 one-day internationals, Dravid scored 10,899 runs, and was top scorer in the 1999 World Cup in England with 461.

Dravid made 69 in his final ODI, against England in September last year.

Under Saurav Ganguly's captaincy, he scored more runs than Sachin Tendulkar and made an incredible 23% of the runs scored by India in the 21 Test victories (at an average of 102.84) that put India on the road to becoming the No 1 Test team in the world.

He captained his country in 25 Tests and 79 ODIs between October 2005 and September 2007, during which time India won Test series in England and West Indies.

In 2011 Dravid enjoyed a superb tour of England, scoring three centuries in four Tests when India's other big names struggled.

In the year 2011, at 38, he finished with the highest number of runs among international batsmen.
Click to expand...



When most people talk, you wait for your turn to speak. With some, you listen. And with a select few, you hang on every word like it's a sermon from on high. For many cricket fans, Steve Waugh falls into the latter category. A combination of Waugh's laconic nature, his avoidance of the spotlight, his abhorrence of banality and his status as the inscrutable figurehead of the Australian team that ruled the world at the turn of the century have made his pronouncements as valuable as any in the game. He is certainly someone whose respect you would be desperate to earn. Muffled praise from Steve Waugh is worth 100 rooftop eulogies from other cricketers.

It's no surprise that Steve Waugh respected Rahul Dravid. He respected him so much that he asked him to write the foreword to his autobiography. Their mutual admiration was cemented over dinner during India's tour of Australia in 1998, when Dravid asked Waugh incessantly about the mental side of the game. They differ in some respects – Dravid's idea of mental disintegration was the watertight forward defensive – but they share crucial qualities. A love of the dying art of batting time. A rich understanding of the history of the game and particularly the importance of Test cricket. An awareness of how important cricket is but also how important it isn't. Both see way beyond the boundary.

In Dravid, Waugh saw a rare species: the truly worthy adversary, and somebody who prided himself of making the tough, important runs. Waugh wasn't in the gutter very often as Australian captain, yet he happily went there in Adelaide on 16 December 2003, to retrieve the ball after Dravid had hit the winning runs in a sensational second Test. It gave India their first victory in Australia for 23 years. Waugh collected the ball and gave it to Dravid. With this being Waugh's last series in international cricket, some saw it as a symbolic passing of the baton. "Rahul wanted the extra edge that would elevate his game to the next level," said Waugh of that dinner date in 1998, "and at the Adelaide Oval he completed the journey".

That performance was probably Dravid's finest in international cricket. He made 233 and 72 not out, batting five minutes short of 14 hours in the match. After that, even this most modest man could not avoid the spotlight. Despite that, and other legendary match-winning performances, there is a temptation to think Dravid as the guy behind the guy, someone whose career was largely spent in the shadows. When he made a gritty 95 on his Test debut at Lord's in 1996, Sourav Ganguly, also on debut, made a sparkling 131. When he batted all day against Australia at Kolkata in 2001, eventually making 180, VVS Laxman also batted all day and made a divine 281, one of the all-time great Test innings. When Dravid struck three unyielding centuries in England last summer, they were lost in Sachin Tendulkar's pursuit of his 100th hundred. Though Dravid was technically beautiful, his often weary face betrayed the fact that batting rarely came easy to him. He did not have the brutal audacity of Virender Sehwag, the poetic elegance of Laxman, the unfathomable, enduring genius of Tendulkar or the sublime cover drive of Ganguly.

What he did have was substance. Dravid will retire with a portfolio of epic innings. Most came abroad; his percentage of Test centuries scored overseas (58) and outside Asia (39) are higher than the other four galacticos. This point might seem piddling – runs are runs are runs – but it ignores the position India were in during the early part of Dravid's career. Between 1986 and 2000 they won just one overseas Test in 48 attempts. To say they were travel sick was an insult to spinning stomachs. Their journey under the flinty captaincy of Ganguly in the early 2000s will always be defined by that miraculous turnaround against Australia in 2000-01, yet the most striking progress came overseas. Dravid, who averaged a staggering 102.84 in victories under Ganguly, was the key to that progress. His performance of Adelaide was followed, later the same winter, by an immense 270 at Rawalpindi to set up India's first ever series win in Pakistan. Eighteen months earlier his masterful 148 in trying conditions at Headingley – the second of four consecutive Test hundreds – led to a first win in England for 16 years. In 2006, as captain, he made 81 and 68 in a low-scoring dogfight in Jamaica to give India their first series win in the Caribbean for 35 years. Dravid batted 597 minutes in the match; nobody else on either side lasted 205 minutes.

All bar one of these performances came during Dravid's peak, between July 2002 and June 2006 – the month in which his overall Test average peaked at 58.75. In that period, he scored 4316 runs at 69.61; even many of Tendulkar's disciples could not deny that Dravid was India's best batsman, and by a distance. Only Ricky Ponting rivalled him as the world's best. Dravid was also the inaugural ICC Player of the Year in 2004.

He lies second behind on the Tendulkar on the Test run-scorers list, with 13288, and fourth with 36 Test centuries. He does have a couple of records of his own. Dravid is the only man to score 10,000 runs in the pivotal No3 position, and the only man to face 30,000 deliveries in Test cricket. As Dileep Premachandran said, he had "powers of concentration that were almost yogic". He was a master of the dying art of batting time and was famously nicknamed The Wall (although, as Mike Selvey pointed out on these pages, he deserved a grander title like The Great Wall of Indore).

To talk of Dravid's ability tells only half the story. He exhibited greatness at its most humble, and is one of the most impressive men to play the game: dignified, fair-minded, eloquent (he never used a ghostwriter), gentle, yet tougher than we will ever realise. A Gary Cooper for the new millennium; the kind of man you'd want your son to grow into. Those who advocate Satan for a living would struggle to produce a bad word against him. There was one charge of ball-tampering in 2004, although most seemed to accept it was accidental. That's about it. Ganguly observed that Dravid had the eerie habit of almost always saying the right thing. He pretty much always did the right thing, too. Both were demonstrated at Edgbaston last summer when he defused the row over Ian Bell's controversial dismissal.

Dravid was also a strikingly selfless team man, and could pop up in the most unlikely places: he batted everywhere from No1 to 7 in the Test team and played 73 one-day internationals as wicketkeeper to aid the balance of the side. He could pop up in other unlikely places: playing for Scotland, or at the United Services Ground in Portsmouth, repelling Shane Warne in one of county cricket's greatest modern duels. He even appeared in the England dressing-room in 2002 to pick Michael Vaughan's brain after he had dismantled India's spinners. Imagine an Indian asking an Englishman for tips on playing spin bowling. Dravid was never too proud to seek advice. "Greatness was not handed to him; he pursued it diligently, single-mindedly," Dravid wrote of Waugh in that foreword. It's a compliment that works both ways. Waugh recognised Dravid as a rare species, and so should we: as somebody who achieved greatness as both a cricketer and as a human being.
Click to expand...

"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. No dream is ever chased alone." - Rahul Dravid , announcing his retirement

"He was totally a class act, on and off the field. A terrific role model for youngsters with his work ethic, with the way he carried himself, with the way he applied himself. It's going to be a bit void in Indian cricket now. I think you really won't find anybody playing with the same tactical virtuosity that you saw with Rahul Dravid." - former India captain Sunil Gavaskar on BBC Radio 5 live

"There was and is only one Rahul Dravid. There can be no other. I will miss Rahul in the dressing room and out in the middle." - Sachin Tendulkar

[font=Georgia,]"All this going around is not aggression. If you want to see aggression on cricket field, look into Rahul Dravid’s eyes"[/font] - [font=Georgia,]Matthew Hayden[/font]

"I knew the man behind the bat. Not often do you find a person as exceptional as his achievements." - former India team-mate Sanjay Manjrekar on Twitter

"I wish my friend Rahul Dravid and his family all the best in his retirement! I have total respect for him." - legendary former Australia spinner Shane Warne on Twitter

"Rahul Dravid has retired. The world's most respected cricketer over the last 20 years. A legend." - former England captain Michael Vaughan on Twitter

"Rahul Dravid, what a legend. Plain and simple. Congratulations on an incredible career. India will miss The Wall." - England batsman Kevin Pietersen on Twitter

"As expected, Rahul Dravid has retired . A man of great stature, dignity and sportsmanship." - Former England coach David Lloyd on Twitter

"He was the model modern Test cricketer. He had a solid defence, tremendous concentration and discipline but also possessed handsome shots. Dravid is also one of the game's true gentlemen." - BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew

[font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]You only needed to apply a sepia wash to photos of him batting with his cap and neckerchief affixed to be transported back to the age of Vijay Merchant or Lala Armanath. Dravid was timeless but always with glorious timing. - [/font]telegraph.co.uk
Click to expand...

Always the unsung hero in many of India's victories.

Best of luck for the new Innings Jammy
<
 
Back
Top