Rahul Dravid On His Lowest Point As India’s Head Coach: ‘We Were Very Close But…’

Rahul Dravid ended his stint as the head coach of the Indian men’s cricket team on a high note. In his last assignment, India managed to end the 11-year wait for an ICC trophy by winning the T20 World Cup title. In the summit clash played at Kensington Oval in Barbados on June 29, 2024, the Rohit Sharma-led side defeated South Africa by seven runs to give Dravid a memorable farewell.

Dravid, who began his stint as head coach after India’s forgetful exit from the group stage of the 2021 T20 World Cup in November 2021, won multiple bilateral series during his two-and-a-half-year stint, but there were some setbacks as well.

During his time, India suffered a humiliating defeat by 10 wickets against England in the semi-final of the 2022 T20 World Cup and by 209 runs against Australia in the 2023 World Test Championship final. In addition to that, despite winning 10 matches in a row, India failed to win the ODI World Cup as well last year.

All these painful defeats are tough to forget, but during a recent interview, when Dravid was asked about his lowest point as head coach of Team India, he ignored the big defeats and instead picked the series loss against South Africa in 2021–22.

According to him, India had a great chance to win the first-ever Test series in South Africa at that time, but despite going 1-0 up, India lost the next two matches.

“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 really big opportunity for us to win that series. 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 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."

“But there were a lot of learnings from that. You know a lot of those experiences, and you know we learnt a lot 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 that you will go through ups and downs. What is really important is to maintain that balance and realise that you can’t always win games. Other teams have also come to play; you’re playing against some world-class sides, and you have no right to always win. You have a right to prepare well, you have a right to your processes, you have a right to do the right preparation, pick the right teams, and prepare your team well, but even in spite of that, some days you lose, and you have to learn how to keep a balance and keep lifting your team and keep lifting the morale of your side," he added.