Former India captain Sourav Ganguly has recalled an unheard-of tale involving teammate Rahul Dravid from their playing days. Speaking on Raj Shamani‘s podcast, Ganguly revealed that during his captaincy tenure, he was often approached by the selectors, who would ask him to drop Dravid from the ODI team due to his poor strike rate. He also shed light on the steps he took to ensure Dravid’s ODI career didn’t come to a premature end, labeling him as one of his most versatile players.
“Rahul Dravid… people used to come to me and say his strike rate isn’t good. Selectors used to say to look for someone else in ODIs, ‘marna padta hai’ (you have to be able to hit). But I didn’t drop him. Because ‘chhod diya toh khatam ho jayega’ (if I let him go, he would be finished). So I used to go to him separately and tell him, ‘Jam, thoda khelna hai’ (Jam, you have to play a bit). And he was such a great player, he adapted. Played at number 5 for India, kept wickets,” said Ganguly.
Ganguly further revealed that India needed a wicketkeeper at that time who could bat, and shared how he convinced Dravid to keep wickets, allowing them to play Mohammad Kaif as an extra batter.
“We just didn’t have a keeper who could bat. Sri Lanka had Sangakkara, South Africa had Boucher, Australia had Gilchrist. ‘Sab batting karte the’ (They all used to bat). But our batting would end at number 6. So we made him the keeper. Then we played Kaif at number 7, which deepened our batting,” he added.
He also recalled that India did not have a proper all-rounder. As a result, he decided to bowl himself, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, and Yuvraj Singh.
“We didn’t really have a proper all-rounder either. ‘Toh team ko banana tha na’ (We had to build a team, right), which is why Sehwag bowled, Sachin bowled, I bowled, and Yuvi bowled. Good teams had them-they had all-rounders and keeper-batsmen, which we didn’t have at that time. ‘Toh woh zaroori tha team banane ke liye’ (So that was necessary to build the team).”
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