Daijiworld Media Network
Bangalore, Aug 7: The Wall of Indian cricket will be playing his last ODI in September, before bidding good-bye to the shorter version of the cricket game. At a time when he was planning to call it a day, Indian selectors have called him back to the ODI squad, after a sabatical of two years. Indeed, lack of communication from both sides has surprised many cricket fans in India and abroad.
Dravid's inclusion has generated mixed reaction from the cricketing world. Some have welcomed the move, while others have criticised.
But according to Dravid fans, the announcement of his retirement has come at the right time, perhaps there could not have been a better time than this, when he is in peak form in test cricket. His fans hope that he would continue his form in one dayers too, but on a little faster mode!
"For England conditions, Dravid's inclusion is the right choice, but for how long will our selectors depend on the old horses?" asks a fan in London, "Yes we do agree that, England has bouncy pitches, but young players must get trained here, and get a chance to play. We must take risks, we have some exciting young players, and they must get a chance," he says.
But his fans are not disappointed with the retirement. "We cannot expect big achievements from Dravid. For us, he retired from one-dayers two years ago when Indian selectors lost faith in him after the South Africa tour. But sadly, we will miss him in IPL too," says a young fan in Bangalore.
"Good thing is, he is now on concentrating more on test cricket. Surely he will achieve a lot in tests in the coming days. We feel he has another couple of years of very good cricket left in him."
"He is a perfect test player, he should continue for another two years," says one of his fans in Bangalore, where Dravid hails from.
38-year-old Rahul Sharad Dravid made his ODI debut in 1996 against Sri Lanka in Singapore. Since then he has played 339 ODIs, scored 10,765 runs with the highest score of 153, 12 hundreds and 82 fifties. He has average of 39.43 in ODIs which is considered very good. He has tried his skills with the ball too in ODIs and bagged 4 wickets with 2/43 being his best figure.
Dravid is known for his ability to bat for a long period of time. He holds multiple cricketing records. He is the second Indian batsman, after Sachin Tendulkar, and the third international player to reach 12,000 runs in test cricket. On 14 February 2007, he became the sixth player over all and the third Indian (after Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly), to score 10,000 runs in ODI cricket in cricketing history. He is the first and only batsman to score a century in all ten test playing nations.