Legendary Indian batter Rahul Dravid believes that Indian cricket has become a formidable force. One of the main reasons as to why this has happened is due to its expanding talent pool that even reaches to the most remote parts of the country.
Dravid, who led India to victory in the T20 World Cup in June, emphasized the significance of a cricket culture which broke the old pattern of city cricketers dominating the path to the Indian team.
“If you look at Indian cricket today, Indian cricket is extremely strong, it’s extremely powerful. One of the big reasons for that is that talent comes from everywhere, from all over the country,” said Dravid.
“I think if you go back to the time of say GR Vishwanath or even when I was starting out my career, most of the talent came from the big cities or from few other states. Even if they were talented boys in smaller places, they had to come to the big cities to play cricket. But today I think you see in Indian cricket that boys are coming from everywhere,” Dravid added.
The former Indian cricketer also talked about the impact of domestic cricket on the overall quality of the sport in India.
“You just look at the standard of the Ranji Trophy. In the old days when you played in the South Zone, other than playing Hyderabad or Tamil Nadu, I think it is fair to say, without being disrespectful, that a lot of other teams you could take it not for granted but you could certainly take it a little bit more lightly,” Dravid told as per PTI.
“I don’t think there is any team in the South Zone today that you can walk in and say that you will comfortably beat,” Dravid added.
Dravid also praised the club cricket system, especially in his home state of Karnataka and added that the system has been pivotal in granting access of cricket to everyone.
“We need clubs to be strong. We need cricket not to be concentrated in the hands of a few people. We need cricket to be egalitarian, we need it to be all over the place.,” Dravid said.
“You cannot have talent or you cannot have facilities concentrated only in one or two places. To get the best out of talent, we need to ensure that young boys and girls are getting access to good infrastructure in every part,” Dravid concluded.
