Widely credited for creating India’s expertise pool on the Under-19 and ‘A’ degree, former captain and National Cricket Academy (NCA) director Rahul Dravid says throughout his stint as coach with these groups, he made sure that every cricketer who toured got a sport not like his taking part in days. Dravid can be head coach of a Shikhar Dhawan-led Indian team that may tour Sri Lanka for a white-ball collection subsequent month. He doesn’t journey with the A and U-19 squads any extra nevertheless it was he who made sure all of the squad members performed on excursions.
“I tell them upfront, if you come on an A tour with me, you will not leave here without playing a game. I’ve had that personal experience myself as a kid: going on an A tour and not getting an opportunity to play is terrible,” Dravid was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
“You’ve done well, you scored 700-800 runs, you go, and you don’t get a chance to show what you’re good at. And then you’re back to square one from the selectors’ point of view, because the next season you have to score those 800 runs again. It is not easy to do that, so there is no guarantee you’ll get a chance again. So you tell people upfront: this is the best 15 and we are playing them. This is not about the supposed best XI. At U-19, we make five-six changes between games if we can,” he stated.
Indian cricketers at the moment are among the many fittest on the earth however there was a time when they didn’t have the required information on health and envied the extra athletic Australians and South Africans, Dravid stated.
In his taking part in days, Dravid stated the notice simply wasn’t there. “Playing on the beach and playing on the road doesn’t make you a cricketer. It makes you someone who loves the game. That’s what we had. We had a lot of people who loved the game,” Dravid stated.
“Unless you give that guy a proper matting wicket or a turf wicket, unless you give him some half-decent coaching, some half-decent fitness assistance? where was all this in the 1990s and the 2000s? There was no access to it. We were starved of knowledge. Even in terms of fitness, we used to look at the Australians and South Africans and we used to look at their fitness trainers, and what did we get? ‘Don’t do too much gym, your body will become stiff. Bowl, bowl and bowl. Run rounds and laps’,” he recalled.
(with PTI inputs)
