Former India captain and head coach Rahul Dravid is set to begin a new journey as a team owner of the Dublin Guardians in the inaugural edition of the European T20 Premier League. Speaking to JioStar, Dravid shared his thoughts on his association with the ETPL as a team owner, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s prospects of playing Test cricket, and Team India’s chances of making it to the ICC World Test Championship Final.
Speaking to JioStar, Dublin Guardians owner Rahul Dravid shared his thoughts on how the ETPL could accelerate the growth of cricket in Europe:
“I’ve always felt that there is a lot of talent and a lot of opportunity to grow the sport in Europe. It felt like the right platform to be able to grow the sport in Europe and to try and make an effort as a former cricketer to have more people participate in the game, recognising that cricket needs to grow and be available to a lot more boys and girls to be able to play the game.”
On his involvement as a team owner:
“There are some really good people to work with and be associated with the league as well. The Amsterdam Flames have Steve Waugh, someone I’ve always admired, and Jamie Dwyer setting up that team. Glenn Maxwell is part of one team, and even the league owners, just the passion that someone like Abhishek Bachchan has for the sport and the team that he has put up to set up the league, felt like a good bunch of people trying to do something really nice. I thought, ‘Why not get involved, do something slightly different?’ I’ve always been involved as a coach or as a player, but trying to set up things and appoint coaches and players and marketing and finance, stuff that is a little bit out of my comfort zone, is exciting nevertheless.”
On Test cricket and why T20 cricket is the perfect format to grow the game globally:
“Personally, I love Test cricket, it’s always going to be the number one format of the game. But, you have to be realistic enough to realise that if you want to grow the game of cricket and not make it a niche game that’s played only by a few countries, and we want the next generation to be able to enjoy, follow and play the game, then T20 is a great format to be able to promote the game, especially in this part of the world, where you’re trying to introduce the game and get more people involved. From there, once you’re able to get people involved in the game, then you can start thinking about putting things in place to see if there’s an opportunity to grow the longer formats of the game in this part of the world. But when you’re starting, when you’re trying to take your early steps, I think the T20 format’s the perfect format.”
On Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s prospects of playing Test cricket:
“With Vaibhav, you’ve got to be patient. He’s only 15 years old, and from what I’ve seen of the kid, I have no doubt that, given the opportunity to practice and play domestic cricket and a couple of seasons of red-ball cricket, he will be able to hold his own in a Test match team. Whether he’ll be able to break into the XI with the guys already performing, that’s a different story and a tricky one. Whether he’ll have the time to play two full seasons of domestic cricket because he’ll be so busy playing for India in the white-ball format, I’m not sure about that. So skill-wise, I think no problem; whether they’ll be able to do it because of schedules might be a bit more tricky.”
On India’s chances of qualifying for the ICC World Test Championship Final:
“I’m hoping they do. It’ll be a great run if India can qualify for the WTC final from here. They’ve fallen behind a little bit, but the kind of quality that the Indian team has, you’re not going to write them off at any stage. They started off well against Sri Lanka, so that’s a good first step. Hopefully, they can keep the guys fit and not have a lot of injuries over the next few months. Australia will be really exciting. A lot of their players will be very keen to do well in India. That’s a generation of truly great Australian players, a great Australian team that has not won in India. So they’ll be keen to do that. New Zealand away, always a challenge. Tough team, New Zealand, to play away from home. A lot of the young Indian boys have not played in those conditions, so that’s going to be a big challenge. We’re missing the experience of Virat and Rohit, Ajinkya Rahane and Pujara, these kinds of guys who’ve probably been there the last time India went. So that will be an interesting series as well.”
