The Wall India can lean on

Rahul Dravid as head coach may herald a new era but his stint will have a fair few challenges

After weeks of speculation and stories planted in the media by the powers that be, the inevitable has been made official with Rahul Dravid succeeding Ravi Shastri as the Indian cricket team’s head coach. Obviously, there is a sense of heightened expectation that the former India captain - who commands great respect for what he has achieved as a player and done for Indian cricket as the coach of developmental teams – will provide new direction to the team, provide the missing link that has prevented it from graduating to an all-time great team from a very good team.

Can he achieve this? Only time will tell. Is he capable of achieving it? Most certainly.

There are, of course, a lot of challenges ahead of Dravid, but let’s look at the aspects that should work in his favour. Unlike in the case of the past two coaches, Dravid comes in as the undisputed No. 1 man in the Indian dressing room. Whether by design or accident, by acceding to most of Dravid’s demands, the BCCI has established him as the most powerful person within the team set-up. At the same time, the events of the last two months or so have compromised the unbridled authority that skipper Virat Kohli enjoyed. Hopefully, this situation will help avoid a clash of strong personalities in the dressing room.

Another crucial point in Dravid’s favour is the proliferation of youngsters in the senior team that he groomed as coach of India A and India U-19 teams. From KL Rahul to Shubman Gill and Mohammed Siraj to Prasidh Krishna, all of them have benefited from Dravid’s expertise at some stage of their respective careers. There is already a deep connect with most of the youngsters and it will only help him get them to buy into his ideas.

Great players, it’s often said, need not necessarily make great coaches. But there is ample evidence to believe Dravid won’t fall into this category. Despite being one of game’s all-time greats, he took up coaching the junior teams and came away with great success. There’s an earnest desire to give back to the game that has made him what he is today. There is no guarantee that he will be able to replicate the same with the senior team, but there’s no reason to believe he won’t either.

There’s one catch, though. The media glare and demand for instant success, unlike from the junior squads, can be crippling. As player and then captain, Dravid has experienced both first-hand, but it’s going to be a different ball game as coach, especially when you come in with unreasonable expectations from all the stakeholders and you don’t have the luxury of controlling proceedings on the field. That challenge starts with the home series against New Zealand, comprising three T20Is (from November 17) and two Tests.

Changing India’s approach to the shortest format will be one of his most daunting challenges, especially with the next T20 World Cup scheduled in less than a year’s time. With a new skipper in charge, Dravid -- a fairly accomplished T20 batsman and a well-admired coach/mentor in franchise cricket -- will have to develop men and means to restore India’s dwindling supremacy in the format when it comes to multi-team events.

Staying with T20s, he will also have to work his way through phasing out some of the senior players. With bio-bubbles here to stay for a little while yet, it will be critical for him to keep the key players fresh for Tests. One way of doing it is to persuade them to give up T20Is. Of course, with the IPL offering big money, players wouldn’t want to lose relevance by quitting the national T20 team but then that’s what he has been appointed for. Rest assured, he won’t shy away from taking tough calls if required, if his declaration of India’s innings against Pakistan in Multan with Sachin Tendulkar stranded at 194 is anything to go by. Beneath that suave, soft exterior lies the spirit of Indiranagar ka goonda!

While there is a definite need to change India’s T20 style of play, it would be interesting to see his plans for the Test squad that has enjoyed stirring success in the last couple of years. Whether it was the mandate given to him or the team’s limitations that he played for, Dravid came across as someone who wouldn’t risk losing a match in pursuit of victory. This is in direct conflict with the ideology of Test skipper Kohli, whose stated policy is to go for win even if it means risking a loss, although there have been a few instances where he has pitched tent to save the matches.

Where Dravid is process-oriented and effective, Kohli is more of an instinctive character - exhilarating to watch but also prone to losing sight of the bigger picture. A perfect blend of both philosophies can do wonders.

Dravid’s other big task will be to navigate through the sands of split captaincy. In England, Australia or even India (Anil Kumble and MS Dhoni, and then Dhoni and Kohli), at least one of the captains didn’t play another format and that perhaps helped avoid a clash of characters. When Kumble was Test captain, he didn’t play in limited-overs cricket and when Kohli took over the Test reigns, it was only because Dhoni retired from red-ball cricket. In the current team, both Kohli and T20 skipper Rohit Sharma play in all three formats and that could be potentially tricky, going forward. It’ll be interesting to see how Dravid manages to keep the change-room happy and productive without hurting the inflated egos of these superstars.