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South Africa's favourite son finally strode into the sunset at the Wanderer's Stadium in Johannesburg to a standing ovation.
The huge turnout at the ground was once again treated to a display of accurate bowling by Shaun Pollock which helped South Africa whitewash the West Indies in the one-day series. The Man of the Series award was Pollock's crowning glory.
There were crowds at every venue to witness Pollock's last series. The vocal support and the banners on the ground proved that they loved him.
Pollock's loss will be not be felt in the immediate future as the South Africans take on bottom-of-the-table Bangladesh. But come the tough tours to India and later England, Pollock's reassuring presence will be missed.
There is a nagging feeling that Pollock left before his time. The South African selectors were keen to select younger fast bowlers after the phenomenal success of Dale Steyn.
The emergence of Morne Morkel as a top class fast bowler and the success of spinner Paul Harris also hastened Pollock's exit.
They opted to drop Pollock from the Test team in Pakistan and for the home series against New Zealand and the first two Tests against the West Indies.
The South Africans were lucky that they played three weak teams and beat them resoundingly. But will Steyn, Morkel and the others really bother tougher teams like India and England?
It seems that South Africa missed a trick here. They could have used Pollock like Australia did with Glenn McGrath in his later years.
Also, they had the bonus of Pollock's batting to shore up a now extremely weak tail. But the South African selectors seem more pre-occupied by quotas than cricket.
A storm has already brewed over the team selection for the Bangladesh tour. The black versus white issue has raised its ugly head again.
Pollock will always be one of the legends of the game. He must be rated as one of the best all-rounders the world has seen.
His records back up the claim. A total of 421 wickets at an average of 23.11 and 3,781 runs at 32.31 in Tests, 393 wickets at 24.50 and 3,519 runs at 26.45 in one-day cricket bear testimony to his immense talent.
There were two sides to Pollock's bowling during his career. He made his debut against the touring England team in 1995-96 as an aggressive fast bowler and a capable lower order batsman.
Pollock had speed, accuracy and movement which made him lethal. He was particularly difficult to handle on the bouncy wickets at home and the seaming conditions in England.
He was the ideal foil for Allan Donald whose all out pace complemented Pollock's accuracy. The two formed a feared combination and they thrived under the leadership of Hansie Cronje.
Pollock took over the captaincy after the Cronje match-fixing affair. He started well but a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Australia and their ignominious exit from the subsequent World Cup ended his reign.
The World Cup disaster was blamed on Pollock's lack of attention to detail and passing of information. It was no surprise that he was dumped for Graeme Smith and it took Pollock a long time to live down that error of judgement.
With age, Pollock lost pace at an alarming rate. But his accuracy and movement were always there. There was one bad spell when he resorted to bowling off-cutters in Sri Lanka after his bowling proved ineffective.
But he regained his form against India at home and kept his end going before the axe fell.
Pollock was an underachiever as a batsman in Test cricket. He had a solid technique to back his wide array of strokes.
In any other Test side, Pollock would probably have batted as high as number six. He was good enough for that position. Probably lack of opportunities and overwork with the ball did not allow him to express himself fully as a batsman.
Still he managed to chalk up a reasonable amount of runs and played some superb innings during crisis. He highest Test score was against Sri Lanka, a stroke-filled 111 not out batting at number nine.
Pollock was aggressive in whatever he did. He was a fighter who did not believe in giving up till the last ball was bowled.
Pollock will always be remembered as a graceful redhead who did everything with style and panache.
