Former India captain and current NCA head Rahul Dravid recently said that Kapil Dev’s advice helped him take coaching as a career. Dravid, quit international cricket with more than 24,000 runs against his name, has since taken charge of India’s under-19 and A teams, overseeing the seamless transition of youngsters into the senior side
“After I finished [playing career] there were quite a few options and I wasn’t necessarily sure what to do. It was Kapil Dev who gave me this advice actually when I was in coming to the end of my career. I bumped into him somewhere and he said: ‘Rahul don’t commit to doing anything straightaway, go out and spend a few years just exploring and doing different things and see what you really like’. I thought it was good advice so I was also a little fortunate that at the back end of my career I was already in a sort of captain’s-coach kind of role with Rajasthan Royals,” Dravid told.
Rahul also revealed he doubted himself as an ODI player when he was dropped from the Indian side in 1998 mainly due to his strike rate.
“There have been phases in my international career (when I felt insecure). I was dropped from the ODI team in 1998. I had to fight my way back in, was away from the Indian team for a year. There were certain insecurities than about whether I’m a good enough one-day player or not because I always wanted to be a Test player, was coached to be a Test player, hit the ball on the ground, don’t hit the ball in the air, coaching like that. You sort of worry whether you had the skills to be able to do it (in an ODI),” Dravid said.
