‘Want to ensure players are switched on’: Coach Rahul sets priority clear

Express News Service

CHENNAI:  The lasting image of Rahul Dravid, the ODI captain, is the one at Queen Park’s Oval, Port of Spain. A distraught Dravid can be seen almost reduced to tears. Project 2007, World Cup, was over even before the party actually began in the Caribbean. 

What is easily forgotten is Dravid, the ODI captain, was the first to move away from the seven-batters theory in search of a five-bowler formula.

In a format where India were so out of depth in chasing, he led them to record consecutive wins while batting second.

And in a World Cup where an attacking batters were needed in the middle-order, he demoted one of India’s all-time opening pair to No 3 and 4 in a must-win game.

That it failed is a different story, but against a team that had a top-class spinner, keeping Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar — also excellent players against spinners — in the middle-order is what the match-ups are all about in the current era.

As he returns to the Indian team’s dressing room after nearly 10 years as head coach, the expectations from Dravid is no less than what was as a player. In the 2000s, he was Indian cricket’s Mr Dependable.

If his predecessor Ravi Shastri was BCCI man for all seasons, Dravid was the team’s crisis man in the middle. Now he inherits a side that is arguably India’s finest.

On one hand, there are young players he has hand-picked, polished, nurtured and has seen them seamlessly graduate from domestic to international cricket.

On the other hand, there are the experienced players who can divided into two. Ones who could still go on to make lasting impression on Indian cricket and others who are struggling to find second wind.

Unlike the Under-19 and India A cricket, where results were not paramount, at the national team, he will be judged on those parameters alone. And the biggest of them will be the T20 World Cup in 11 months’ time and the 2023 50-over World Cup at home. 

“Coaching can’t be the same everywhere. Certain principles of coaching will remain the same but it won’t be exactly so. All that I did with the U-19 team won’t be happening here. I need to understand what is going on with the team and mould them and ensure that I get the best out of them,” Dravid said in his first press conference on the eve of the first T20I against New Zealand in Jaipur.

Though there have been calls to make separate teams for T20s to manage the workload concerns, Dravid said India are not looking at it at this stage and instead would focus on rotating.

“I don’t think we’re at that point where we’re looking at separate teams. Of course, there are certain individuals who only play particular formats and there are some who play all formats. For me the players’ physical and mental health is the most important thing. I will always be in conversation with them and I’d like to work with them to ensure that whenever they’re playing, we have them fully switched on and we need to recognise that these are challenging times for people, for players, and especially for those guys who are expected to play all formats. We might not be able to play every single player in every single game across formats, we need to accept that as reality,” he said.