Former head coach Rahul Dravid reveals reason behind Indian cricket's massive growth

Rahul Dravid also talked about the increasing standard of domestic cricket in India.

Former Indian cricket team head coach Rahul Dravid has explained the reason for the massive growth of Indian cricket. During Dravid’s tenure, the Indian side played three ICC finals across all formats.

The Men in Blue reached the ICC World Test Championship and ICC ODI World Cup finals in 2023. Unfortunately, they suffered heartbreaking defeats at the hands of Australia in both championship matches.

Dravid’s tenure came to a memorable end after the Indian cricket team lifted the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 in June in Barbados. This also ended India’s 11-year-long ICC title drought. The former head coach also helped Men in Blue to lift the Asia Cup 2023 title in Sri Lanka.

Talent comes from everywhere: Rahul Dravid

Dravid said that Indian cricket has become “extremely strong” because the cricketing talent is present in abundance in the country.

“If you look at Indian cricket today, Indian cricket is extremely strong, it’s extremely powerful. One of the big reasons for that is that talent comes from everywhere, from all over the country. If you go back to the time of, say, GR Vishwanath or even when I was starting out, most of the talent came from the big cities or a few states,” Dravid said during the 50-year celebration of Mount Joy Cricket Club.

“Even if there were talented boys in smaller places, they had to come to the big cities to play cricket. But today I think you see in Indian cricket that boys are coming from everywhere,” Dravid added.

Dravid believes that the overall standard of domestic cricket in India has grown significantly and no team can be taken lightly in any domestic tournament.

“You just look at the standard of the Ranji Trophy. In the old days when you played in the South Zone, other than playing Hyderabad or Tamil Nadu, I think it is fair to say, without being disrespectful, that a lot of other teams you could take it not for granted but you could certainly take it a little bit more lightly. I don’t think there is any team in the South Zone today that you can walk in and say you will beat comfortably,” the former head coach said.

We need clubs to be strong: Rahul Dravid

The legendary cricketer Dravid also hailed the club cricket structure in the country. He reckons better infrastructure at lower levels is a must for cricketers to learn and grow.

“We need clubs to be strong. We need cricket not to be concentrated in the hands of a few people. We need cricket to be egalitarian, we need it to be all over the place. You cannot have talent or facilities concentrated only in one or two places. To get the best out of talent, we need to ensure that young boys and girls are getting access to good infrastructure in every part,” Dravid added.

“After the practice, HAL [Hindustan Aeronautics Limited] would give us two eggs and one small glass of milk. I would always stay back for that glass of milk and those eggs. Not because I wanted the milk and eggs. But because I wanted to sit and listen to the likes of BK Kumar or Nandan talking about cricket. And it used to be great fun to listen to them and learn so much from them,” Dravid concluded.

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