Former India cricketer and former Team India head coach Rahul Dravid steps in to support captain Shubman Gill, who is currently the leader of India’s Test and ODI setup. A few days back, Gill said that players should get some extra time to prepare for a Test match. Dravid said the same during a recent event.
Under the coaching of Gautam Gambhir and Shubman Gill’s leadership, Team India had some uncertain moments in the recent past, especially in the Tests. Back-to-back defeats in the Test series put a question mark on the team’s overall credibility. According to Gill, if they get more days for preparations, the result can improve further.
Rahul Dravid supports what Shubman Gill demands
During a recent event, former India cricketer Rahul Dravid, under whose leadership India claimed the ICC T20 World Cup 2024, mentioned that cricket in the limited-overs format and Test cricket are completely different ball games. For a Test match, cricketers need to go through a process, which can take several days, to get accustomed to a different format, which will not be easy. According to Dravid, the longest format of the game tests cricketers’ skills at best.
“Shubman Gill 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 three formats, so I think he would have realized 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,” Dravid said.
Shubman Gill asked for a 15-day preparatory camp
Shubman Gill is among the few Indian players who played for the national team in all three formats. So, because of the busy schedule, Gill and other multiple-format cricketers often get a very limited amount of time for preparations. Gill requested a mandatory 15-day preparatory camp ahead of each Test series, following the side’s shocking 0-2 home series defeat to South Africa. Before that, India tasted brutal defeat against New Zealand and Australia as well in this format.
Dravid pointed out that the Indian players are getting a significant amount of time in the Twenty20 format, rather than Test cricket. For the Indian Premier League (IPL), cricketers used to engage with the T20 cricket for a period of about three months, with a massive duration to get habituated with a particular format. As the players are now spending much of their time in T20, Team India is performing well in the T20Is as well.
Test match is not easy: Dravid
“There were times when we would get to a Test match three to four days before the match, and then when we start practicing for the Test match, 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,” Dravid added.
“That’s become a real 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.”
