Press Trust of India
New Delhi, Sept 2: Former captain Rahul Dravid stated Wednesday that it was a misconception that current Indian cricketers are bad players of spin and their struggle against Sri Lanka spinners had more to do with ‘pressure’ than ability.
Ranagana Herath and Tharindu Kaushal made life tough for the Indian batsmen in the recently concluded series, which India won 2-1.
India A coach Dravid, who has just finished a long series against Australia and South Africa A teams, opines that Indian youngsters are still good players of spin and can go a long way if they do a few nips and tucks.
“There were a couple of times in this series that we got stuck, we were not able to rotate the strike and the pressure came on and you lose two or three wickets quickly. I don’t think Indian payers are bad players of spin,” Dravid asserted.
“We are suddenly not bad players of spin but maybe the high pressure cricket these boys are playing gets to them. Like T20 cricket, where the value of the single is not so much. So to create a single in between the big shoot is what a Mohammad Azharuddin or a VVS Laxman could do on slow turning tracks,” he added.
Dravid asserted that contrary to popular perception young cricketers are at ease with the long-format. “They (youngsters) are not struggling to play long-form cricket. There are a lot of very good long-form cricket players like AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli, Steven Smith, they are tremendous T20 players and playing long-form cricket as they did in any generation. It would be unfair to say that they are unable to play long-form cricket. I think challenges change and the environment has changed a little bit,” he said.