Rahul Dravid Came Up With A Hilarious Reply To Working With 6 Different Captains: India have arrived at a situation that nobody would have anticipated: by the end of this month, June, India will have had 6 different captains leading the national side across formats since the time Rahul Dravid became the head coach! SIX!
The year started with Virat Kohli leading the Test side in South Africa before stepping down as the Test skipper. Late last year, Rohit Sharma had been appointed as the new white-ball captain with KL Rahul as his deputy.
Rohit then missed the South Africa tour, where Rahul captained for the first time in Test cricket – in Johannesburg when Kohli was injured – before leading the Men In Blue in the ODI series versus the Protea.
Rohit then captained the team in the entire home season – white-ball games against West Indies and Sri Lanka and donned the captain’s cap for the first time in Test as well, against Sri Lanka. India swept the entire home season before the IPL under Rohit’s captaincy.
After the IPL 2022, when Rohit was rested, KL Rahul was charged to lead in the 5-T20I series versus South Africa again with Rishabh Pant named as his deputy. However, Rahul got ruled out of the series due to a groin injury which meant a promotion for Pant to lead India for the first time in his career.
Now, astonishingly, Hardik Pandya, the Gujarat Titans’ IPL 2022 winning skipper, will be making his India debut as captain later this month in Ireland in the 2-T20I series as Pant and Rohit will be in England with the Test side while Rahul has been ruled out of the England tour.
And it is not to forget that Ajinkya Rahane led the Test side in a Kanpur Test last year versus New Zealand when Kohli was rested.
Rahul Dravid jokes about working with 6 different captains
Head coach Rahul Dravid jokingly said that he has had fun working with six different captains since the time he took over the coaching job last year. He pointed out that because of the log-jammed schedule, players had been needed to give a rest and hence India have had so many players leading them in recent months.
“Probably been 6 captains in the last 8 month that I have had to work it. Which wasn’t the plan when I first started. But it is the nature of COVID, the nature of the number of games we playing, it is about managing the workload of the squad,” Dravid said on Sunday.
He was happy to see several players being part of the leadership group.
“Few changes in captaincy means I have had to work with quite a few people over the last few months which in itself has been challenging but great fun too. It’s good a lot of guys have got to lead the team and given us the opportunity to create leaders in the group,” the head coach added.
