Sunil Gavaskar believes Rahul Dravid can take over as head coach in “the same way” as he did as a hitter

Rahul Dravid’s first duties as head coach of the Indian men’s cricket team will be T20I series three matches against New Zealand, will be conducted on Wednesday in Jaipur. Dravid, who participated in Tuesday’s joint press conference with T20I captain Rohit Sharma, spoke on a range of topics including his vision for the team, workload management and approach in shortest format of the game. Dravid takes charge of the team from Ravi Shastri, who enjoyed a successful tenure as the team’s head coach, but failed to win any ICC titles.

There were three ICC tournaments during Dravid’s tenure, including the T20I and ODI World Cup respectively, along with the ICC World Test Championship.

Dravid had a great time as a cricketer for India, then went on to become one of the best tennis players the country has produced. He is the captain of India winning the Test series in England and the West Indies and has the fourth highest number of runs in Test cricket history with 13,288 runs in 164 matches. He also scored over 10,000 international runs in a single day and was part of the Indian team that reached the final of the 2003 ICC World Cup.

Given Dravid’s stature in the game, his past track record as a player, and experience coaching the Under-19s and India A teams, many of the game’s greats believe he will take Indian cricket to a higher level. One of them is former India captain and batting legend Sunil Gavaskar.

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“When he played, we thought that until Rahul Dravid peaked, the Indian batting was safe and strong. This is why I believe that the new responsibility of the head coach rests on his shoulders, he will be able to tackle it in the same way,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports ‘Follow The Blues’.

With a number of young players on the Indian team for the T20I series, it will be interesting to see how Dravid gives the opportunity and creates the next superstars of Indian cricket.