Just over a month ago, in England, a senior Indian cricket board official asked Rahul Dravid, “Why are you so serious? Your expression looks like the whole weight of Indian cricket is on your shoulders.” The Indian captain laughed wryly, and replied. “You don’t know.” Now we know. After two years of leading a volatile group of cricketers — aggressive smalltown youngsters with an in-your-face attitude that he struggled to understand and insecure veterans desperate to get the script they wanted for the final chapter of their careers — Rahul Dravid last night simply shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

In a letter that he handed over to BCCI president Sharad Pawar at the Union Minister’s New Delhi residence last night, the captain wrote that he “should not be considered for the job” any longer.

He will now be The Wall only on the cricket field, as a batsman.

As Dravid told BBC late tonight: “I enjoyed the captaincy, I loved it, but it can get tough after a while and some of the enjoyment can go away... So I thought it was the right time to step aside.”

So that’s it, then. Enough of conspiracy theories, boardroom manoeuvres, soothing one ego one day, massaging another the next, and in between worrying about his own batting form — and yes, the countless media conferences, the same questions, the mechanical answers, the speculation, the denials, the mind-numbing pressure.

The “instability of India’s cricket environment” had finally got to him, said a source who has been interacting regularly with Dravid over the years. Apparently, the Team India skipper has concluded that “being a captain involves skills that have nothing to do with what happens on the cricket field, and he doesn’t feel the need to acquire those skills at this stage of his career.”

... contd.