It was completion of the golden era of cricket when
Rahul Dravid hung his boots on March 9th 2012. A day ago at his
felicitation ceremony, he could not control his hard hidden emotions and gushed
out with tears during his farewell speech. That moment he actually
discovered the pain to be separated from team India and got off his dream
game cricket. A great cricketer, a disciplined sportsman and a gentleman turned
out to be a black cloud over the opponents throughout his career. He has always
defended himself to be a part of the media controversies but always shined his
name with his consistent great performances. If Sachin Tendulkar is the God of
cricket, eventually the God could not beat the wonders that an ordinary man made
at number three in the history of Indian cricket. He always over shined the level
of cricket with his extraordinary talent and his true sportsmanship. He has
been a valuable asset for the team on and off the field. His politeness and his
gentle image got him the opportunity to represent India a year ago at the
annual Sir Don Bradman oration 2011, everyone who had gone through that speech
could figure out, if he was not given that privilege then who else?
Rahul is a role model for every growing kid of the country
and even overseas for his extreme of the ability to endure and to survive in
any situation. He is worth to be called a perfectionist. The cricket legends and his fellow players always quote golden words about him. Harsha Bhogle,
a great cricket expert and commentator once defined Rahul with an adjective of
being an artist, “Rahul is like a perfect prose with every comma and full stop
in place”. Chris Gayle, a horror for all the bowlers in any format of cricket,
says “it’s very nice to see Rahul batting, he can hit the ball hard and play
like me but I can’t play like him.” Rahul, carrying all the achievements and big
words in his quiver, is still rooted.
Rahul has been mentioned on cricket books for plenty of records.
He is one of the batsmen to cross the milestone of 10,000 runs and is the only
cricketer with more than 150 innings while batting at number 3. Rahul was honored on the occasion of crossing 10,000 runs with a wall of 10,000 bricks
at the Chinnaswamy stadium. It is a wall of commitment, consistency and class
written over it. The calm and composed cricketer shares the two all time
biggest ODI partnerships with Sachin Tendulkar(321 runs) and Sourav Ganguly(318 runs) and an
unforgettable partnership of 376 runs at Eden Garden Test against Australia with
VVS Laxman in 2001 are out of the long list of achievements. He is the only
player with having taken the most number of catches in the test cricket. He is
out of the four batsmen who have scored 10,000 runs in both the formats of cricket,
test and ODI. Rahul, getting range of the achievements during his 16 years long
career has been a kind human being nevertheless. He has been out shadowed by fellow players' fame and stardom but has always taken the team out of the odd situations
and brought it to wins many times. Despite of having great cricketers and big
names Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly in the country, Rahul has made
himself equally worthy and supported the team at his best. There were times
when he failed but he took every disappointment as a learning experience and
raised his level along with the time. Rahul has not only got the fame but an
immense respect from his fans all across the world for his focus and commitment towards the game. He could win more hearts than the matches he got.
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