Rahul Dravid mocks working with multiple captains – Firstcricket News, Firstpost

Indian head coach Rahul Dravid mocked the fact he had to work with five to six different captains since the time he took over the role in a home series against New Zealand last year. Speaking with the broadcasters, Star Sports, Dravid talked about his time with the team so far and also poked fun at working with too many captains.

“It’s been good fun. It’s been challenging as well. We probably had about six (five) captains in the last eight months to work with, that wasn’t the plan! But yes, that’s just the nature of the game with the pandemic, and the number of matches that we are playing. Managing the squad, the workload, and the changes in captaincy as well. It meant I had to work with quite a few people.”

The primary captain either injured or rested had been the reason largely for such change in captains, except for Virat Kohli handing over the reins to Rohit Sharma.

Incidentally, Dravid worked with Ajinkya Rahane, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, and Rishabh Pant as captains over different series and different formats. Dravid also worked with Shikhar Dhawan as the captain against Sri Lanka in mid-2021 before he was appointed as full-time head coach.

Dravid, however, highlighted that it has helped different people to step into the leadership role, and this might be fruitful in the future.

“It’s just good that a lot of players have got opportunities to lead, for us to create more leaders in the group. As a group, we are constantly learning and improving, playing better. We had the opportunity to try out a lot of different people.”

Dravid also spoke about different series that the team played under him and admitted that the loss against South Africa was a bit disappointing.

“If I look back at the last eight months, South Africa was a little bit of a disappointment. In the Test series, we were 1-0 up there but we failed to win the series after that. It was a disappointment, especially with the World Test Championship cycle. But I think our white-ball cricket has been good. We were able to come back from there and get on a bit of a roll in the T20I games. Even in this series [T20Is against South Africa], we have been able to fight back and show the character of the team and the quality that we have.”

To add the number of leaders, Hardik Pandya will lead India’s next T20I assignment against Ireland. However, NCA chief VVS Laxman will coach the side as Dravid will train the Test squad for the one-off match against England. India will play England in Birmingham from 1st July onwards.

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