Former Indian head coach Rahul Dravid gave his gratitude to 1983 World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev for valuable advice towards the fag end of his career. Dev told Dravid not to rush into any decision and take his time before coming to any conclusion.
After ending his glorious career with the team, Dravid had many options to choose from. In the end, he decided to pick coaching and did a fantastic job with the Under-19, India A, and the Indian team. Dravid led the Indian Under-19 team to the final of the 2016 World Cup, and the team won the title in the next edition of 2018.
With the senior team, Dravid led the Men in Blue to glory in the 2024 World Cup. Furthermore, India qualified for the final of the 2023 ODI World Cup and the 2023 World Test Championship final under his tutelage.
Dravid recalled how it all started and revealed that playing a captain-cum-coach role at the Rajasthan Royals helped him a lot.
Rahul Dravid said on Ravichandran Ashwin’s YouTube Channel, “Kapil Dev gave me some advice. I was just finishing my career, and I happened to bump into him somewhere, and we were having a conversation. And Kapil paaji said, ‘Rahul, don’t make a decision on what you want to do straightaway.’
“As you get close to the end, you think, Oh, what next? What should I do? It’s natural just the way we are. We don’t want to be sitting at home; you want to be contributing, you want to be doing things. And he said, ‘Don’t commit to something unless you are very sure. Experience a lot of different things for a few years and then see what it is that you really like.’”
“And I was actually quite lucky because I was playing for Rajasthan at that point of time, and at that time, Shane Warne left. In the second and third years of my career with Rajasthan Royals, I was actually playing the role of a coach-captain. That was a kind of system at the Rajasthan Royals in those days. You didn’t really appoint a coach, so to speak, and Warne led the team and sort of did a lot of the things around it, and I sort of just continued in that over the next couple of years.”
Dravid revealed he was able to get support at Rajasthan Royals as the likes of Paddy Upton and Zubin Bharucha backed him.
“Of course, I had supportive people around me. I involved Paddy in the system; Zubin was always around. Monty was there, I think, in those days. But a lot of it fell on you as a captain. You kind of had to lead, you had to do the auction, you had to understand the dynamics of the finances,” Dravid added.
The former Indian captain said he was lucky to get that opportunity at the Rajasthan Royals, and he was able to grab it with both hands.
“In a lot of ways, I was lucky that I got that opportunity at the back end of my career to get involved in a lot of these things. It sort of gave me an inkling for two months as to what coaching and working with young players was like. And then the rest of the time I was doing sort of commentary or other corporate speaking, or I was doing some sponsorship work that I was involved in.”
“For like, 2-3 years, I got to choose and did quite a few different things. I realized that till I was fit. Obviously, coaching is again something that you have to be fit for, and it’s not something you can keep doing forever. It was the thing that I enjoyed the most. I definitely enjoyed coaching and working with people, and engaging in interesting conversations and growing and learning from those was something that I really enjoyed,” Dravid added.
Dravid is currently the head coach of the Rajasthan Royals.
