IND vs SA: Handling Young Players Is Rahul Dravid's Greatest Strength – Sanjay Manjrekar

Cricketer-turned-commentator Sanjay Manjrekar said Rahul Dravid’s greatest strength is to handle and manage young players.

Dravid is fondly known for grooming a current lot of Indian youngsters like Ishan Kishan, Rishabh Pant, Prithvi Shaw, and Shubman Gill during his tenure as India’s U19 coach.

India also won its fourth U19 World Cup title under Dravid with Shaw as the captain in New Zealand in 2018. Dravid replaced Ravi Shastri as the senior Indian team’s head coach after the T20 World Cup last year.

Rahul Dravid will be doing his best with whatever he can control: Sanjay Manjrekar

Manjrekar believes Dravid will give his best to field a formidable playing XI for India in the upcoming fixtures.

“I think he will be very good at that. He is one of the most intelligent cricketers that I have come across, Rahul has always been worldly-wise, a very intelligent person, so that aspect he will handle beautifully and that’s why he was so good at the junior level as well. Handling young players is his greatest strength,” Manjrekar told News 18.

“Rahul will be doing his best with whatever he can control, which is mostly off the field, picking the right XI, maybe tactics during breaks and in all that you can expect him to be at his best,” he added.

You expect Rahul Dravid to pick the right XI for ICC events: Sanjay Manjrekar

India hasn’t won any ICC tournament since the 2013 Champions Trophy in England. Post that India reached three semi-finals and two finals but ended as the second-best side in those knockout games.

In the last T20 World Cup, India failed to qualify for the semi-final stage in what was the last assignment of Virat Kohli as the T20I captain.

“I still maintain the coach has a marginal role to play in a team’s eventual achievements and performances. It’s still the captain who calls the shots but the one thing you expect Rahul to do really well is team selection, picking the right XI,” Manjrekar said.

“My simplistic conclusion from what happened in the last four or five ICC events was the kind of playing XI that India picked, I thought they just overthought the whole process and somehow the playing XI didn’t quite make sense and that went on to hurt India on occasions,” he added.

The ICC T20 World Cup 2022 is just four months away and Indian team management should ruminate on all the possibilities to draft their final 15-player squad for the showpiece event.

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