Last Updated on 3 months ago by Charbel Coorey

Former India coach Rahul Dravid recently opened up about the challenges facing the Indian Test team currently. Dravid believes that India’s all-format batters aren’t getting enough time to hone their skills against the red ball due to the sheer amount of cricket that they play all year.

After going through a 12-year stretch where they won 18 home series in a row, the Indian team has crestfallen in the format under head coach Gautam Gambhir, with their home dominance being ripped to shreds first by New Zealand (0-3 in 2024) and then by South Africa (0-2) this winter.

Dravid, who presided over the Indian team across formats from 2021 to 2024, recently attended the launch of The Rise of the Hitman: The Rohit Sharma Story in Bengaluru.

“One of the things I understood as a coach, especially the guys that play all three formats, they keep moving from one format to the other. There were times when we would get to a Test match three to four days before the match, and then when we start practising for the Test match, [and] when you look back at the last time that some of these guys had actually hit a red ball, it might have been four months ago or five months ago,” Dravid said, as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.

“That’s become really a challenge, how do you almost find the time to be able to develop some of the skills that are hard. To play on turning tracks or play on seaming wickets, doing that for hours and hours in a Test match is not easy. It requires skill.”

Rahul Dravid on the challenges of playing Test cricket in the modern era 

A major chunk of Dravid’s career unfolded in the absence of franchise cricket. Dravid reflected on the same, stating that he used to get enough time to prepare for Test cricket as a player, something that modern cricketers don’t get due to the volume of action throughout the year.

Current Test captain Shubman Gill recently stated that the players are not getting enough time to prepare for a Test series, urging the BCCI to factor in this aspect while deciding the schedule in the future.

“In my generation, when there were only two formats in the game, and there wasn’t really the idea of franchise cricket, there were a lot of times where I would have a whole month of practicing for a Test series,” Dravid said.

“I would be able to play with the red ball, and I would be able to develop my skills. Now, one of the things that has become a bit tougher in red-ball cricket is a lot of our guys who play all the three formats, or who play the amount of cricket that they are playing, sometimes don’t have the time to be able to practice red-ball cricket as much.

“I think Shubman has kind of alluded to it a little bit, just recently, because I think he’s one who experienced that. He’s one who actually played recently for us in all of the three formats, so I think he would have realised how difficult it is for him to actually gear up for the Test format.”

Rahul Dravid on how WTC has forced teams to prepare result-based pitches 

Over the past five years, Indian pitches have significantly changed, with the management opting to go for result-based pitches to grab WTC points. In fact, this is something teams around the world have been doing since the inception of the World Test Championship.

This has given teams short-term success, but as India have found out in the past two seasons, such surfaces not only bring bowlers with lesser skills into the equation, batsmen lose confidence and the ability to bat for longer periods, while bowlers also develop bad habits and lose patience.

Dravid admitted that the advent of the WTC has put more pressure on home teams to produce result pitches, which is one of the reasons why batters have been struggling recently.

“The importance of getting result-oriented wickets has become much more. In the old days, you just had to win a series against the team; you were not looking to win every Test match. Today, the pressure on home teams to win all the games has increased because of the World Test Championship. That’s why I think you are seeing slightly more wickets, which are favoring the bowlers too much. And not only in India, but everywhere,” he said.

“I have been only a coach when the World Test Championship is on, and I have certainly seen that the pressure of those points has at times made you ask for result-oriented wickets. No one wants to go to extremes, but certainly results are important, especially in your home games,” Dravid said.

India are currently languishing in sixth place in the World Test Championship table. Their next assignment will be a two-match Test series in Sri Lanka this summer.