Rahul Dravid announced his retirement from international cricket, ending a career that underpinned India’s rise to the top.
The stat that perhaps best sums up Dravid is not the runs he made or the hundreds he notched up, but the number of balls he consumed over a Test career than spanned 15-and-a-half years.
In 286 Test innings, Dravid played 31,258 balls. Given that no other batsman has faced more than 29,000 deliveries, it puts into perspective the amount of hard work and sheer effort that went into scoring those 13,288 runs. In terms of dedication to their craft and working on achieving perfection, though, Dravid ranks second to none. That dedication fetched him just rewards, ensuring he scored runs in every country he played in, and finished his Test career as the second-highest run-getter, next only to Sachin Tendulkar.
From the moment he scored 95 in his first Test innings against England at Lord’s, it was clear that he was an exceptional batting talent, but even so not many would have envisaged a career that spanned 164 Test matches and 344 one-day internationals. His maiden Test century, a sparkling 148 against a tough South African attack in Johannesburg, further confirmed his class, and from there it’s been a journey of several highs, interspersed with – as every career must have – its share of lows.
