The last legion

Rahul Dravid:

I hate you. I hate the way you remain calm in the adverse situation, I hate to see you play, you are too boring, even seeing you play in T20 feels that you are slow (even though you may hit sixes) and score with strike rate of above 100. Don't give me that look, it is not in your nature to show that aggressiveness, the best you can do is be the bore that you are and go on.

This are the traits that we as India and the world will never witness again in ODI's. Because Dravid (The test cricketer) who cannot play one day cricket retired from one day cricket after amassing 10000 runs and some odd 300+ one days. They say you are slow, but these were the same people who ridiculed Jacques kallis for being slow and now this same people have extinct because Jacques kallis shut them out.

But you are unlike Jacques kallis. Every time fingers have been raised, you went back, revised the basics and came back strong. Dude, what were the basics? Remain calm, build an innings, remain poised, weather the storm, concentrate and work hard. This is what you had done all the years. Result, there was always someone to outshine you, stand on the platform created by you and become the face of the day, and you my friend remained a second fiddle always.

They say you are not Tendulkar or for that instance but do they understand there is no other dravid too. No other player who in terms played Gentlemen's game. To those people, yes this slow test cricketer is no tendulkar or ganguly, because there is no other ganguly or tendulkar born, like there is no gary sobers, clive lloyd or zaheer abbas. But Just because he is no tendulkar, ganguly means his accomplishments are to be ignored???

For the stats, he is the only 2nd indian batsman to score fastest 50, only batsman to feature in 2 highest partnership. The only second batsman to hit 4 consecutive hundreds after sunil gavaskar, one of the all time highest run getter in world cricket, a record 200 catches. Anyway, I'm not here to say this numbers, I'm here to show that your retiring is not going to make any difference.

Yes, I said it, it is not of any importance, those T20 specialist will easily take care of it. You will not be missed not even slightly even though india may be half down in pavilion and our only hope used to be you to reach a respectable score. Even if they cannot take care of it, atleast they will not bore us, we will be entertained by their way of getting out, some sixes and sky shattering shots. They will not stick around the wicket all day, they will not weather the storm, they will be hurricane, come and gone.

Dravid, you THE WALL are to remain a second fiddle in Indian cricket and you will not be missed. Why, because you were born in a land were cricket is a religion, were batting is easy, people want to be Tendulkar because he can hit big sixes and you my friend have hit only 19 sixes in your test career. How can you think of inspiring such a generation of human beings were they want everything on the go, on the platter served fast. Hang your ODI boots dear friend, this generation will not take inspiration from you. We want heroes, who can fight. No one wants a second fiddle to be our idol . We do not remember mithun chakraborty from Agneepath, why because he was a second to Great Amitabh bachchan, we do not remember Pran from many of Amitach bachchan movies, dude he played second to amitabh. So how could we even imagine you as idol for our generation.

I know you have some test cricket left with you and I'll still see some boring big innings from you and read several forums were they will criticize you, so till then to voice their criticism, I end this blog with "Please stop, let this generation see what will they be missing without you in the team. Give them a chance.