The search for a dignified end to a sporting career

Osman Samiuddin in the National writes that in sport, the business of retirement can be an unsettling one, not only because it is not easy to know whether something irreversible has set inside a player or whether it is merely a temporary slip. While they make make adjustments as they recognise the approaching of the end, what the sportsmen are really doing, writes Samiuddin, is battling the conceit of the rest of us who think we know that it is time for them to leave.

Why should sportsmen care what people say? Why should Dravid, Laxman, Federer go at any time other than of their own choosing?

It is not for them to understand they are past it. This is all they have known. It is what they have sweated towards their entire lives. To expect them to leave voluntarily and suddenly, when others think the time is right is presumptive nonsense.