Former captain Rahul Dravid feels the Indian team’s young cricketers would miss inspiration in the dressing room when Sachin Tendulkar calls it quits after his 200th Test even though his legacy would linger for a long time to come.
“A young cricketer will lose the inspiration. He loses the opportunity to share a dressing room with Tendulkar, a living legend. It was for me, I was seven years junior to him as a player and just getting into the dressing room and putting your kit bag next to Sachin meant something. It was an inspiration in some level,” Dravid said.
“The next generation of players will miss him, not having SRT in the dressing room. He has been an inspiration for long to so many young kids. It’s been a big loss. He might not be present there in the dressing room but his legacy would be there for a long time to come. It would be carried by next generation of players,” he told ESPNCricinfo.
Dravid, one of India’s greatest batsmen himself, said Tendulkar, as a teammate, was always approachable and remained grounded despite being a superstar. “Sachin was always approachable. He would make you feel extremely comfortable. If he would have carried on as a superstar, no one would have been able to stop him in the Indian dressing room,” he said.
“He is a superstar, no doubt about it. The way he presented himself shows that Indian cricket could achieve a lot, grow around him. He helped Indian cricket have a successful period for the last decade and a half or so,” he added.
Dravid said he knew that the time for Tendulkar to draw curtains on his long and illustrious career was quite close but he had no inkling that the veteran would decide to bid adieu with the home series against the West Indies next month. “You knew that it was going to happen sooner rather than later. There were indications that he would finish it but he would finish that with the West Indies tour, I did not get that inkling,” said Dravid.
“It’s been a great career, a great opportunity for him and for the whole of India...These two matches to recognise what he has done. I think it’s a great time for him to go, in a sense the 200th Test match. It’s a great occasion for him playing in his 200th Test, probably in Mumbai and in front of his home crowd. It’s fantastic for him,” Dravid said.
200th at Wankhede
Mumbai: Tendulkar will bow out from the game at the Wankhede Stadium here by playing his landmark 200th Test match against the West Indies next month.
It was at this very venue that he made his debut in first class cricket. "Tendulkar had expressed the wish yesterday that he wanted to play his 200th match at his homeground and the BCCI (Cricket Board) today acceded to his request and has decided that the Test will be held at the Wankhede Stadium from November 14-18," said Mumbai Cricket Association's President Ravi Savant on Friday.
Savant did not want to go into the details of how MCA persuaded BCCI to allot the game to its home venue, amidst reports that the Cricket Club of India, BCCI's second affiliated unit in the city, also wanted to host the match. "I don't want to go into the details. Suffice it to say that the match would be held at the Wankhede Stadium," Savant told reporters.
Savant met BCCI chief N Srinivasan, who was at the Board's headquarters on Friday, before making the announcement ahead of the Programmes and Fixtures committee meeting on October 15 to chalk out the detailed programme of the West Windies tour.