Sitting inside the cavernous press conference hall of Melbourne Cricket Ground earlier this year during the Cricket World Cup, UAE coach Aaqib Javed’s laughter echoed inside the walls for a long time after he described the man sitting next to him as “the best 43-year-old international cricketer I’ve ever seen”.

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That man, of course, was Khurram Khan. The lynchpin of UAE’s batting who carried the responsibility on his ageing shoulders with amazing grace before calling time on his 14-year-old international career yesterday.

Javed wasn’t laughing that day because Khurram reminded him of any age-related joke. He was simply amused at the irony of the situation – that he was the coach and yet he was a year younger than one of his players.

It was also not lost on the handful of reporters present there that Khurram was a rare commodity in the sport. A career that stretches into the late 30s in international cricket is considered long, and anything beyond 40 is unusual. But if you are playing international T20s and ODIs – the more physically demanding formats – after 40, you surely are a freak.

But Khurram Khan was something much more than that. He finally decided to call it a day at the age of 43 years and 349 days, while simultaneously juggling his international cricket career with an even more demanding fulltime job as a purser with Emirates Airlines.

I will never forget a story about Khurram, which really was a recurring theme with him. A few years ago, I was attending the nets of the UAE national team a day before an important associate match. Khurram wasn’t taking part, so I asked a team-mate about his whereabouts.

“He is somewhere 38,000 feet above the Atlantic,” said the player. “But don’t you worry. He lands early in the morning and he will make it to the stadium on time.”

Unlike the Tendulkars, Pontings and Misbahs, Khurram never had the luxury of focusing just on one profession. Cricket was never Khurram’s first priority, and yet it was his innate and unabashed love for the sport that not only helped him to carry on, but actually become better at it with every passing year.

Nothing proves this more than the unbeaten 132 he scored against Afghanistan last year to become the oldest ODI player to score a hundred, and his new-found fitness level while playing the World Cup.

And therein lies the biggest reason why we need to celebrate his outstanding career. He may not have smashed tons after tons against international teams, but you could sense his dedication and passion for cricket with every run he scored for his adopted country.

Adios Khurram. Now go and rest that weary body of yours.