The Test specialist plays his last in the T20 format

Ironic as this may sound, but a championship win has till date, eluded him and Rajasthan Royals. Even if his swansong seems to be in a format which does not exactly approve of his natural game, Dravid is going all out to ensure that he calls it a day on a high.
Hasn’t Dravid always been India’s crisis man? Sourav Ganguly undoubtedly gets the most credit for changing the fortunes of Indian cricket at the beginning of the last decade, but he perhaps could not have done it without the purple patch and sacrifices of Dravid occurring from the period of 2002-2005.

Come 13 years later, and Dravid is the leader of Rajasthan Royals which gets entangled in a severe spot fixing case. Yet, his gentlemanly, calm style of captaincy ensured that his team finished a respectable third in the IPL 2013.

When it comes to his sojourn in the shorter formats of the game, Dravid has had the greatest struggle out of all cricketers. He was conditioned since childhood to not lose his wicket and bat the opposition out all day.

However, Dravid’s work ethic, team ethic and goal setting abilities are what differentiate him from others. He made sure that he scores off every ball in the ODI game to become India’s best ‘finisher’ by the year 2002, when he was the wicketkeeper of the team as well. No wonder, he is in the elite club of scoring more than 10000 runs in the format!

By 2008, Dravid was the icon player-cum-captain of his home franchise, Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL. He had a mixed run and was mainly consigned to just being the stabiliser for his team, which even Jacques Kallis was. And that did not fit well for Bangalore in their bid to win the championship.

Hence, he was dumped but picked by Rajasthan. 2011 was not great for him either, but quitting international cricket and captaining a young, heterogeneous team surely gave Dravid the license to improve his running between the wickets and his attacking instinct.

What followed, was amazing! Dravid in a never-seen-before, inspirational avatar started hitting the ball hard as he scored at a strike rate of 120 minimum and fielded with the energy of a man half his age.

He proves that a human being may be conditioned to approach life in a certain way, but could fail if he does not realize that he needs to change, and can do so as nothing can stop him if he has willpower and patience. To see him the last time on a cricket field would be a tearful moment indeed.

Indian cricket has arguably lost their greatest servant.