Rahul Dravid is fairly articulate. This is one of the reasons why he is an excellent man manager. But when needed, he can get his point across even without using words. That’s exactly what the India head coach did before the T20 World Cup final. After India beat South Africa by seven runs, displaying a comeback of the ages to end a 13-year drought for a World Cup trophy, Suryakumar Yadav revealed how Dravid used a two-slide presentation to tell the players that it was up to them to rise to the occasion.
Suryakumar, who took a match-defining catch of David Miller in the last over, said Dravid showed a graph involving the number of T20Is that the members of the Indian team played. It had the numbers of captain Rohit Sharma, stalwart Virat Kohli and also the youngest member of the team, Yashasvi Jaiswal.
The next slide listed the number of T20Is India’s coaching staff—Dravid himself, batting coach Vikram Rathour, bowling coach Paras Mhambrey, and fielding coach T Dilip—had played. Dravid is the only one in India’s support staff who has played T20Is at the highest level. In fact, his first T20I (against England) was his last, as he announced his retirement from white-ball cricket following that match.
“He showed a graph of the number of T20I games the entire Indian team had played — from Virat bhai to Yashasvi Jaiswal (the most junior member). That number was 800-plus,” Suryakumar told The Indian Express. “And then he showed a second slide that had the number of games that the entire coaching staff, including Rahul bhai, had played — that number was 1.”
Thanks to the IPL and Syed Mushtaq Ali T20s (India’s domestic T20 tournament), the Indian players play a lot of cricket in the shortest format. Jaiswal, the youngest member of India’s T20 World Cup squad, has 98 T20s (including 17 T20Is), while Rohit and Virat Kohli, the two most experienced members of the side, have accounted for 284 T20I matches.
‘You are the best judge’: Dravid’s words to India players before T20 World Cup final
Suryakumar said Dravid wanted to highlight the amount of experience India’s players have in this format.
“He (Dravid) said to us, ‘You are the best judge here to make the right call at the right time. So leave every other thing to us, go out there and enjoy your game’,” Suryakumar said.
India became the first team to win the T20 World Cup without losing a single match. In the last phase of Dravid’s tenure, India made the final of all three ICC events in a span of 13 months. India lost only one match out of 20 in the last two World Cups, proving their dominance.
Suryakumar said the team’s motto was simple – live in the present and don’t worry about the future. “Before the start, we decided that we won’t talk about what lies ahead in the tournament. Nobody thought about Super 8 and the same was true for the finals in Barbados. Our mind has to be where our feet are — that was our motto,” he said.
Dravid will no longer be a part of the Indian dressing room as he has decided to not renew his contract. The BCCI is likely to announce the next head coach of Team India soon. The race is between two former India openers – Gautam Gambhir and WV Raman.
