It is never easy to see a partnership being broken but that is exactly what the retirement of Rahul means to me. I have been most fortunate in having the wonderful privilege of being involved in many match-winning partnerships with Rahul for the country in the last 15 years or so.
I am not really surprised by his call to retire. It was inevitable that it should have happened. All of us are at the fag end of our careers and each one of us has to move into the twilight. Rahul had called me up recently and told me about this. He said that he has been pondering about it since we returned from Australia and was now very clear in his mind that the time had come for him to walk away from the game he loved so very much. He said he had enough of all the travel and wanted to move on with life and spend more time with his family, whom he loves very dearly.
There are so many things that I can say about Rahul but my emotions be able to handle it. He has been a really wonderful friend to me. The first time I saw him play was at the under-19 level (I was about 16 or so and he was two years older) and since then to the last Test we played in Adelaide recently, my respect for the man has grown by leaps and bounds.
I have always enjoyed batting with him. He was a selfless man whose priority was the team. During the Kolkata Test against Australia in 2001, I was promoted to bat at No. 3 in the second innings and Rahul batted at No. 6. But he never showed any disappointment or unhappiness on being asked to bat lower in the order. He just came out to bat with me and we built a partnership which turned things around for the team.
What was amazing about that knock was that Rahul was unwell and was on antibiotics but still came out and got a century in the most trying circumstances. Rahul has always had a problem with dehydration and batting in those conditions was really heroic on his part.
There were some things common about us but our batting styles are different. But neither ever tried to influence the other’s style of batting. Such respect, I think, for each other’s game helped our friendship bloom. Our friendship grew during the 1994-96 period when we played for South Zone together.
Dravid was by nature a very quiet person and hence he didn’t open up with all, and one wouldn’t find him joking too much. He shared a kind of bonding with Javagal Srinath and they would have a real gala time in the dressing room. In the later years, we became quite close and shared a lot of things.
When one fields at slips one needs to be very alert and hence both of us had the chance of sharing a lot of ideas at that position. We not only spoke about cricket but also a lot of other things – from marriage, kids to other things in life. Just like me, Rahul too had a great passion for domestic cricket and we often bounced off ideas on making domestic cricket stronger. Even when he was captain, he was always receptive to ideas even from the juniors. Both of us love books and would go shopping for them when abroad. It was mostly autobiographies, motivational and management books.
The funniest moment that I remember about Rahul is when we won the Adelaide Test against Australia in 2003-04. We finished the game around lunch but Rahul had his cricket gear on till well after dinner. He was so excited that he didn’t even bother to change his whites etc.
Rahul had that excitement for the game from the first day of his career till the last and that’s what makes the man a true legend. Rahul bhai, you will surely be missed by the team but mostly by me in the slip cordon.