As ‘A’ team coach, made sure every player on tour got a game, says Rahul Dravid on Indian bench-strength

Dravid will be head coach of a Shikhar Dhawan-led Indian team that will tour Sri Lanka for a white-ball series next month. He doesn’t travel with the A and U-19 squads any more but it was he who made sure all the squad members played on tours.

Widely credited for creating India’s talent pool at the Under-19 and ‘A’ level, former captain and National Cricket Academy (NCA) director Rahul Dravid says during his stint as coach with these teams, he made sure that every cricketer who toured got a game unlike his playing days. Dravid will be head coach of a Shikhar Dhawan-led Indian team that will tour Sri Lanka for a white-ball series next month. He doesn’t travel with the A and U-19 squads any more but it was he who made sure all the squad members played on tours. “I tell them upfront, if you come on an A tour with me, you will not leave here without playing a game. I’ve had that personal experience myself as a kid: going on an A tour and not getting an opportunity to play is terrible,” Dravid was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. “You’ve done well, you scored 700-800 runs, you go, and you don’t get a chance to show what you're good at. And then you're back to square one from the selectors’ point of view, because the next season you have to score those 800 runs again. It is not easy to do that, so there is no guarantee you’ll get a chance again. So you tell people upfront: this is the best 15 and we are playing them. This is not about the supposed best XI. At U-19, we make five-six changes between games if we can,” he said.