Dravid, who succeeded Ravi Shastri as the head coach of Indian cricket team after a careless exit from group stage of 2021 T20 World Cup, has seen many ups and downs during his time. He eventually ended his time as Indian head coach on a winning note with the T29 World Cup 2024 title.
Under Rahul’s coaching, India reached as many as 3 ICC tournament finals. After losing against Australia in both World Test Championship and ODI World Cup final in 2023, Indian team gave Dravid a farewell to be remembered by defending south African in the 2024 men’s T20 World Cup.
While lot of people feel losing the 2023 ODI World Cup last year against Australia was the biggest setback for Dravid ad Indian coach, Dravid thinks otherwise. According to him, the series loss against South Africa was 2021-22 was them lowest point of his coaching time for India.
During a recent Star Sports interview, Dravid said that India had a great chance to win the first-ever Test series in South Africa at that time but they could not do so.
“If you ask me what is the lowest point, I would say the South Africa Test series early on in my career. We won the first Test match in South Africa in Centurion, and then we were playing in the second and third test match. We have never won a series in South Africa, as you know. It was a rally big opportunity for us to win that series,” said Dravid.
“Some of our senior players were not there. Rohit Sharma was injured, and we didn’t have some senior players in that series. But we were very close, and in both the test matches- the second and the third test matches- in the third inning, we had a big opportunity. We could have set a decent score and won the game, but South Africa played well. they chased back in the fourth inning. So I would say that that was probably my lowest point in my coaching of not being able to win that series in spite of being ahead,” he added.
Dravid also said that the series loss against South Africa has taught them a very important lesson to maintain a balance between ups and downs as a leader.
“But there were a lot of learnings from that. You know a lot of those experiences, and you know we learnt from them. We learnt a lot about our team. We learnt a lot about things that we needed to do. So I think as coaches, what is very important is to maintain that balance and realise that you can’t always win games,” said Dravid.
According to reports, Dravid is in talks with IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals to take up the role of head coach before the start of IPL 2025.
