A few get it right but quite a few others struggle with the timing when it comes to the dreaded ‘R word’ in the star-spangled firmament of Indian cricket.
The continued suspense over Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s future has revived the debate on whether the biggest icons in Indian cricket know when the time is right to bow out of the scene gracefully.
The 38-year-old Dhoni has been on a sabbatical for more than two months now and is unlikely to be available for India assignments even in November.
But there is no word on whether he plans to call it a day from international cricket despite a clamour for it.
“It’s highly unlikely that Dhoni will be available against Bangladesh (home series). In BCCI, we prepare a 45-day match schedule (international and domestic), training, anti-doping whereabouts chart for all senior and A team cricketer. There is nothing marked against Dhoni,” a BCCI source told PTI.
It has been learnt that Dhoni is also not going to play the Vijay Hazare National One-Day championship for Jharkhand which starts on Tuesday.
“I think he (Dhoni) should be going without being pushed out. We need to look beyond Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He, at least, doesn’t figure in my team,” Sunil Gavaskar recently said as an expert on national television.
But then Gavaskar had always walked the talk as a cricketer.
No one did it better than Gavaskar, who played one of his finest innings in his farewell Test against Pakistan, 96 on a Chinnaswamy “snake pit”, where the ball jumped and turned square.
It was 1987 and Gavaskar was 37 but with his impeccable technique, could have well played till the tour of Pakistan in 1989.
