close
Friday March 29, 2024

India’s red-ball batting a ‘work in progress’: Dravid

By Agencies
October 10, 2018

NEW DELHI: Former batsman Rahul Dravid feels that India have a lot of depth in white-ball cricket, but lack of red-ball practice makes their long-form batting a work in progress.

“Work constantly needs to happen. It is not a one-time thing or a two-year thing,” Dravid told a magazine when asked about India’s batting form in Test cricket.Former India captain Dravid, coach of their A side and Under-19 teams, scored 13,288 Test runs and remains at No 4 in the list of leading run-getters of all time.

“I definitely feel that in white-ball cricket we have lot of depth, largely due to the amount of white-ball cricket that is played. In red-ball cricket, we have talent and decent backups, but again it is a work in progress.”

India lost the series in England 4-1. Dravid feels that a proper first-class schedule before the Tests could have helped the Indians.“I benefitted hugely from having proper first-class games. Maybe schedules have changed and things are more complicated, but there is no doubt that a couple of first-class games before any Test tour is only going to help,” he said.

Despite the show in England, India do have a problem of plenty with a number of outstanding performers coming through the ranks.“That will be one of the biggest challenges we will face in the future. Opportunities to play in the Indian team are limited and sometimes you could be doing everything right, and still not get selected,” pointed out Dravid.

Dravid added that in terms of batting time, going through challenging times and being able to play on bowler-friendly tracks, the batsmanship has taken a hit.“Batsmanship comprises of many things. If you were to view it from the prism of shot-making ability, innovation, power, ability to hit sixes and scoring at a quicker rate, then there is no doubt batsmanship has improved,” he said.

“But if you view it from the prism of batting time, being able to get through challenging times and being able to play on tracks on which seam or spin is more, then maybe batsmanship has declined a little bit,” he added.