It was at Lord's more than 12 years ago that Rahul Dravid took the first tentative steps of an epic journey that has encompassed more than 10,000 Test runs and 25 centuries. And as the sand trickles slowly and cruelly into the bottom half of the timer, there is every chance that his final game will also be against England.
These days, though, he starts so slowly that all the momentum generated by the helter-skelter opening partnership of Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir is inevitably lost. And all too often a couple of hours of toil is followed by a lapse and the sort of stroke that he would not even have contemplated in his halcyon days.
