Northampton: In an apparent snub to the Cricket Board, veteran Indian batsman Rahul Dravid on Saturday announced retirement from One-Day and Twenty20 cricket after the ODI series and one-off T20 International against England just hours after he was named in the squads for both the shorter versions of the game.
Dravid, who made a surprise comeback into India’s limited-overs squad for the five-match ODI series after being out of the side for two years, said in a statement here that he was surprised to be chosen for the England series as he has not selected for two years.
“I am honoured and privileged to be selected in the Indian one-day team,” he said after India’s warm-up match against Northamptonshire in which he did not play.
“Since I had not been picked for one-day cricket for the last two years, I was obviously a little surprised and to be honest, because I had not been picked,” he said in the statement issued after the warm-up game.
He said he now wants to concentrate on Tests in the future though he had not informed about it to the BCCI before his selection today.
“At the end of this one-day series, I would like to announce my retirement from one-day and Twenty20 cricket and concentrate only on Test cricket,” he said.
Dravid was recalled to shore up India’s struggling batting line-up by being named in the 16-member squad for the Twenty20 and one-day cricket series against England beginning August 31.
Dravid last played an ODI match against the West Indies during the 2009 Champions Trophy in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Dravid has made 10765 runs in 339 ODIs with an average of 39.43 with 12 hundreds and 82 fifties. He has not played any Twenty20 International match.
He recently became the second highest run-getter in Test cricket — 12576 runs from 155 matches — behind Sachin Tendulkar and also levelled Sunil Gavaskar’s 34 Test centuries to become the joint highest Indian century maker. (PTI)