In a letter that he handed over to BCCI president Sharad Pawar at the Union Minister’s New Delhi residence last night, the captain wrote that he “should not be considered for the job” any longer.

He will now be The Wall only on the cricket field, as a batsman.

As Dravid told BBC late tonight: “I enjoyed the captaincy, I loved it, but it can get tough after a while and some of the enjoyment can go away... So I thought it was the right time to step aside.”

So that’s it, then. Enough of conspiracy theories, boardroom manoeuvres, soothing one ego one day, massaging another the next, and in between worrying about his own batting form — and yes, the countless media conferences, the same questions, the mechanical answers, the speculation, the denials, the mind-numbing pressure.

The “instability of India’s cricket environment” had finally got to him, said a source who has been interacting regularly with Dravid over the years. Apparently, the Team India skipper has concluded that “being a captain involves skills that have nothing to do with what happens on the cricket field, and he doesn’t feel the need to acquire those skills at this stage of his career.”

Chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar says the selection committee will now decide on the 34-year-old’s resignation and thereafter next week.

But knowing Dravid, nobody is under any illusion. “Sachin Tendulkar is the obvious first choice now. But we have 12 ODIs coming up now, and we would like to look at somebody for the future. But it’s too early to take a call,” said a senior Board official, who did not rule out the possibility of Twenty20 captain Mahendra Dhoni being asked to lead the one-day team.

“There’s Sourav Ganguly, too,” reminded a national selector.

But quite typically, Pawar himself did not reveal much. “The selectors have placed faith in me to lead continuously for two years and I’m grateful for that. He said he would like to concentrate on his batting and the opportunity should be given to a new person to lead the side,” he told reporters.

But though Dravid’s letter took the Board by surprise, the Bangalorean had actually wanted to quit as captain soon after the World Cup disaster in April until he was persuaded by senior BCCI officials to continue “for a while” as the “time was not right then”.

That was, of course, after Greg Chappell had pressed the accelerator on his long-term vision for Indian cricket, leaving Dravid wedged between his senior team-mates who wanted to continue and the coach who wanted a new, young India as soon as possible.

The result, we all know - Chappell had to go. And Dravid was left gasping in the exhaust of that stormy departure, leading a group with some surly faces who had wanted him to stand up for them against the coach during the tumultuous last six months of the Aussie’s stay.

Yes, Dravid did prove a point by agreeing to stay on first, and then pulling the team back on track during the Bangladesh tour, and England.

But he also probably realised that he no longer had the entire group on the same pitch — during the Bangladesh tour, it was almost always Tendulkar, Ganguly, Zaheer Khan and Yuvraj Singh at one table, and Dravid alone or with Anil Kumble and some of the youngsters at another.

Soon, in Ireland and England, the media latched on to little incidents: it was speculated that Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar were keen to play in the Twenty20 World Cup but were strongly persuaded not to by the skipper; it was also reported a day after Dravid controversially chose not to enforce the follow-on in the final Test that pacer Zaheer Khan was raring to go, not tired as the skipper had said.

By then, under the “dual pressure”, his batting had also started to slip — he was averaging under 30 over the last two series in South Africa and England, against a career average of 56.50. He knew he had just about a couple of seasons left to go. It was just a matter of time, the right time. Now, looking back, how was Dravid as a skipper?

On the field, terribly defensive at first, then tentatively aggressive. Not too great in the slam-bang one-day world, but very, very successful in Tests - a 5-4 record outside has meant that India had finally begun to shake off the tigers-at-home image.

But like Chappell, who he admires a lot, it was off the field that Dravid was found struggling. Like the hugely popular Ganguly before him, Dravid knew where the keys to turn on his players were, but unlike Ganguly, he wouldn’t reach for them if it meant compromising on the rigid philosophy he had worked out for himself.

For instance, he once gave Mohammed Kaif a book to help him improve his batting when the struggling batsman was possibly looking for a ‘don’t worry, yaar, it will be alright’ message.

“That was the way I grew up and played my cricket and there’s no reason why others can’t cope,” Dravid had explained.

He simply didn’t believe in “adjustments” and that was also the reason his tenure as captain saw the best and worst of Indian cricket - the exit and return of Ganguly, the Chappell controversies, the backbiting, the World Cup nightmare; also, a Test series win in West Indies after 35 years, a Test won in South Africa for the time, another Test series win in England after 21 years.

Now, as a batsman, after 112 Tests, 9492 runs and 24 centuries, there will be no adjustments either. And that is something Indian cricket would look forward to.