That talent comes from everywhere – Rahul Dravid on Indian cricket’s widespread talent pool

Rahul Dravid, who has extensively worked with India’s youth during his reign as the coach of the national team, has produced talents such as Akash Deep, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rinku Singh among others. These three made their debut for the Indian cricket team under his coaching and ever since they came onto the scene, they’ve impressed heavily.

Apart from the young players, the existing stalwarts namely Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami have all been prolific under Rahul Dravid. The former India coach has highlighted the extensive club culture in Indian cricket as one of the major providers to India’s widespread talent pool.

Talking at the 50-year-celebration of Mount Joy Cricket Club, Dravid said, “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."

He further added, “If you go back to the time of, say, GR Vishwanath or even when I was starting out, most of the talent came from the big cities or a few states. Even if there 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."

He concluded by stating, “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. You cannot have talent or 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’s success with the Indian cricket team was massive as the Men in Blue made their way to the semi-finals of the 2022 T20 World Cup, the finals of the 2023 World Cup and finally clinched the T20 World Cup in 2024.