Farewell, Rahul Dravid

Rahul Dravid’s retirement, announced with typical elegance today, is not just a sad business because it means we’ll never see the great technician again but because it is the beginning of the end of India’s greatest generation. I think it is possible to argue that Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman have been the finest batting trio since Worrell, Weekes and Walcott bestrode the West Indian stage in the 1950s. There have been other great batsman, of course, but few trios whose achievements are quite so inextricably linked or whose careers have overlapped quite so completely. Add, at various times, Saurav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag to the mix and you had, for more than 100 tests, as formidable a quartet as has played the game since, well, since Indian independence. We’re going to miss them, you know.

Bar a faltering in South African conditions, Dravid’s statistics are close to unimpeachable. No-one has faced more deliveries in test cricket but remembering Dravid as “The Wall” does him a disservice.