Former Indian head coach Rahul Dravid believes lack of preparation in the red-ball version has led to India’s downfall in Test cricket. India suffered a 0-2 Test series loss against South Africa despite playing at home.
Furthermore, India was stunned 0-3 by New Zealand in 2024. Thus, India has lost five out of their last seven Test matches at home. Recently, India’s Test captain Shubman Gill has urged BCCI to organise a 15-day training camp ahead of a Test series.
Dravid said Gill would have realised how difficult it is for him to play all three formats consistently.
Rahul Dravid said at an event in Bengaluru, “Shubman has kind of alluded to it a little bit, just recently, because I think he’s one who experienced that. He’s one who actually played recently for us in all of the three formats so I think he would have realised how difficult it is for him to actually gear up for the Test format. The guys that play all three formats, they keep moving from one format to the other.”
“There were times when we would get to a Test match three to four days before the match, and then when we start practising for the Test match, [and] when you look back at the last time that some of these guys had actually hit a red ball, it might have been four months ago or five months ago.”
Before the home Test series against South Africa, played an away T20I series against Australia.
“That’s become really a challenge, how do you almost find the time to be able to develop some of the skills that are hard. To play on turning tracks, or play on seaming wickets, doing that for hours and hours in a Test match is not easy. It requires skill.”
On the other hand, India has been a dominant force in T20I format and Dravid said India has regularly played in the shortest format and thus have found success.
“You look at the hitting part, and the way people are hitting today in white-ball cricket, it’s because they are able to practise it a lot more. A lot of these boys who spend two-and-a-half months in the IPL, all they are doing is practising how many sixes they can hit, so they are getting much better at it,” said Dravid (via the aforementioned source).
The fourth T20I between India and New Zealand will be played at Visakhapatnam on Wednesday.
