Indian captain Rahul Dravid was at pains to justify the walking off by his team's most experienced campaigner Sachin Tendulkar who gifted away his wicket in a crucial situation in the second cricket Test here today.

Dravid, who had also walked but waited at the boundary line for the third umpire's verdict on the run-out dismissal, said even Tendulkar did not know what happened exactly.

"A batsman knows when he's out and that's why I walked but waited on the line for the decision. It was disappointing," he said about his own action.

"And the one which happened to Sachin happened so fast that even he did not know. It was known only after seeing a lot of replays," Dravid said.

"We asked him but even he did not know what exactly happened and he walked. It all happens so fast, you react instinctively," he said.

Tendulkar, a veteran of 128 Test matches, walked back to the pavilion in India's first innings after a Shoaib Akhtar delivery brushed his right glove and was caught by wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal. But the irony was that the glove was not in contact with his bat which means he was not out.