NEW DELHI: With his tenure as the
Team India
head coach ending, batting great
Rahul Dravid
looked back at the ups and downs in his tenure with the
Indian cricket team
.
The Indian cricket board (
BCCI
) shared a link of a heart-warming video of
Dravid
talking about his time with the team, his achievements and his disappointments.
Former India captain Dravid had left the international stage as a player without a World Cup win.
And under Dravid the coach, India became the No. 1 team in both Tests and ODIs with the
T20 World Cup
title victory coming as the icing on the cake.
Looking back at the pivotal role he played in the evolution of Indian cricket, Dravid says, "I'd like to believe that coaching is not just about coaching cricket. It's about coaching and building connections with people, creating right environment that allows success. I feel that I'm a part of a team whose responsibility is to create the right professional, safe, secure environment that doesn't really have a fear of failure as such but is challenging enough to push people. That has always been my endavour to try and create that."
After the T20 World Cup title victory, India captain
Rohit Sharma
announced his retirement from T20Is. A rookie Rohit, now 37, was part of the first T20 triumph when India beat arch-rivals Pakistan in the final in Johannesburg in 2007.
Dravid said he will miss
Rohit
as a person more than just as a captain and player who amassed runs and records.
"I've really enjoyed working with Rohit, he's someone I knew as a young boy, just to see him grow as a person, grow as a leader in Indian cricket, what someone like him has been able to contribute to the team over the last 10-12 years, both as a player and now as a leader, has been a real tribute to him and the effort he has put in, the time he has put in. I've really enjoyed getting to know him as a person as well, really enjoyed seeing his commitment, his care to the team, just to try to get the environment right, to try and make it an environment where everyone feels safe, secure, enjoy themselves, while it's also a very competitive and a professional environment. It's something that I'll miss, this connection with Rohit," Dravid adds.
Dravid also praised
Virat Kohli
, who also called time on his T20I career and lauded the India superstar for his professionalism and commitment.
"With Virat, during his initial days I had only a couple of series with him as a captain, just a couple of Test matches. But then just getting to know him as well and just to see the way he goes about his business, his professionalism that he continues to display, his desire to improve, his desire to get better, I think it's simply fascinating for me to watch," Dravid said.
On the memories that he will carry from his coaching stint, Dravid said, "The kind of people that I've had the pleasure of working with, my coaching staff, people who I've worked closely with and the support staff as well, the professionalism around them, I think that for me is really the fondest thing I'll have. I know there have been results, we've had some good results and some results have not been that easy, but that's part and parcel of being a coach and a cricket team. But for me I think the fondest memory that I'll take is the connections that I've built, the friendships that I've built, that'll last long after I forget some of the good results and bad results. And my family as well. Everyone invested in the Indian team over the last two and a half years, I certainly have by being here, but so has my family. Each and every result that the Indian team has been a part of, serves me really nice as well to see how my two young boys have been involved in every result. I have really enjoyed myself, I think it's been a great learning experience for me, I loved connecting with the team, I loved connecting with the players, some of them I have known earlier, having coached them in Under-19, India A having been there, I had already interacted with most of them before having got here. There have been some new ones as well I have got to know over the last two and a half years. Some of the boys whom I started playing with like Rohit, Virat. For me to see how they've grown and they've become is also really nice. Got to know them a little more, personally, it's been quite fantastic. I've really enjoyed it, I'll only take pleasant memories from my two and a half years here with India."
During his time as head coach, Dravid claimed he detested cutting and switching up the lineup too much and always attempted to act as a counterbalance for Rohit so the latter could come up with winning plans of his own.
"I'm someone who actually likes continuity and don't like to chop and change too many things because I believe that creates a lot of instability and doesn't create very good environment. I feel that I am a part of the team whose responsibility is to create the right professional, safe, secure environment that doesn't really have a fear of failure as such but is challenging enough to push people. That has always been my endeavour."
Being the new coach and having "never envisaged" having to deal with six captains, Dravid remarked that he had a difficult time during the players' recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"One of the things that we really had to manage, especially in the early part of my coaching tenure here with India. We were at the back-end of the Covid restrictions. "We really had to manage their workloads through all the three different formats. There were a few injuries and it led to me working with something like 5-6 captains in the first 8-10 months of me being here. It was definitely something that I hadn't envisaged, or not something that I thought about, but it just sort of organically happened."
The pandemic had some positive effects, too, as many young people were able to experience being a part of the India squad, even though Covid placed a lot of limitations on players and they essentially lived in a "bubble case" at all times.
"The other thing that happened, which was very nice to see is, because we played so much of cricket after Covid and we had to cram in a lot of series, it meant that we had to almost, at times, have two teams playing at the same time in different parts of the world.
"Over the last 2-1/2 years, especially in white-ball cricket and lately towards the back-end (of my career) even in red-ball cricket, we were able to give a lot of youngsters a lot of opportunities, bring a lot of people into the side."
"Some of them developed and stayed on in the side a little bit longer, but some of them, they were there because at that point of time maybe some of the seniors were resting."
Dravid claimed that because he has always valued the process, people have occasionally misinterpreted him as lacking a focus on results, according to PTI.
"For me that's (results), of course it's important. I keep saying and people think, 'Oh, I think result are not important'. Of course, results are important.
"I'm in the business to produce results. But it's always like, as a coach, to think about what is it that I can control to help the results and at the end of the day our responsibility should be to try and help the captain deliver his vision and his philosophy of how he wants the team to play."
"Of course, to win cricket games is a given. You try to win as much as you can. You start with that. But I always look back on what is it that leads to the winning? How do you win more games and what is the process required to win more games?
"For me, the vision was to try and get that process right. Ticking all of those boxes. 'Are we challenging the players enough? Are we practicing well enough? are we prepared tactically, technically? Are we supporting the players as best as we possibly can, Are we creating the right environment?
"These are the things I think that are important to tick before you get to the winning. The winning, hopefully, if you do a lot of these things, most of the time the winning will take care of itself."
Former India batsman
Gautam Gambhir
is widely reported to succeed Dravid as coach of the Indian team.
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