Rahul Dravid on working with six captains: The head coach of Team India Rahul Dravid stated that working with six different captains wasn’t the original idea when he took over last year when Ravi Shastri’s contract ended with the 2021 T20 World Cup.
Virat Kohli also resigned as India’s T20I captain following the World Cup last year. He was later sacked from the ODI captaincy position as well as BCCI wanted a single captain for the white-ball forms. After the South Africa Test series, Kohli also gave up the Test captaincy, making Rohit Sharma India’s captain across all formats.
However, India has utilized a number of captains in the recent few months, including KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant, due to the hectic schedule and injuries to Rohit. In the forthcoming T20I series against Ireland, Hardik Pandya will take the Men in Blue’s captaincy for the first time.
Dravid discussed his coaching experience with the Indian side thus far and opened up about working with many captains in a short period of time during his discussion prior to the fifth T20I match against South Africa.
“It (coaching) has been quite exciting, it has been good fun, I must say. It’s been challenging as well, we have got six captains in the last eight months, which actually wasn’t the plan when I started, but it’s the nature of the number of games we are playing, it’s the nature of Covid, so I have had to work with quite a few people, it has been great fun. A lot of other guys have got an opportunity to lead, we have got opportunities to create more leaders in the group,” Dravid told broadcasters.
The second-highest run-scorer for India in international cricket also talked about team India’s performance in recent times and admitted that the test series against South Africa was a disappointment as even after winning the series opener India lost the series.
“We have constantly strived to get better, we have tried a lot of different people. In the last eight months, touring South Africa was a bit of a disappointment in terms of Test cricket. Our white-ball cricket has been good though, showing the character of the team,” he added.