Before beginning his first assignment as the coach of India A team, Rahul Dravid today fully appreciated Virat Kohli’s decision to play against Australia A, saying it depicts Test skipper’s intent and commitment to prepare himself for the upcoming Sri Lanka series.
Rahul Dravid, while speaking in a press conference said “It is great. It is fantastic that Virat wants to come and play. In fact, he spoke to me almost three weeks ago wanting to play at least one match in the series. It is nice that he is very keen to play and prepare himself for the Sri Lanka tour. He wants match practice and we are happy.”
Rahul Dravid, the wall and former Indian captain and the India A coach said it indeed was a good opportunity for youngsters to catch attention of the Test captain. He said “It is always nice to have the Indian captain (in team) and I think it will be great boost for lot of the young guys in the team who want to impress the captain. It is better way to do it in front of him. He is playing in the same eleven.”
Commenting on the drawn unofficial test against Australia A, he opined ‘It spun a little bit’. He further explained “We knew that if we are to force a result, we need to get them at 40 for 3 early on. If they were to get the result they need to get 170 or so losing one or two wickets. It was a slow wicket and was not easy to score runs, especially off the faster bowlers. It spun a little bit later on but it is a classic five-day wicket. Unfortunately, for us to force a result was not really easy.”
Dravid also believed that this drew a lot of positives from the game. He described “Good all round positives. Pragyan Ojha coming back from the issues that he had and Amit Mishra getting in to the Indian side. They are still bowling well. I guess it is one of the positives from their perspective. The conditions were not ideal for the seamers. I thought the two seamers and Vijay Shankar bowled with good disciplines and it was nice. In the batting, again, it is very hard wicket to judge. It was not free flowing and was not easy to score lot of runs. In all round, I thought even in the batting the guys who made contributions chipped and kept. It was hard work and we need to look to be positive. Given the conditions few all round positives from this game.”
Let’s hope that vibrant Virat Kohli’s presence will prove to be a great morale booster for the youngsters and this will also enable Virat Kohli to show his true colors in the upcoming series.
