Not sure if current players are willing to go into depth to study the history of cricket, says Rahul Dravid

In today's hectic schedule, are organised interactions possible these days with the cricketers?

I think it works best if it’s not organised. Something like this will work really well if both the person who wants to learn and the person who is willing to teach are in sync. It cannot be forced down their throat. It can really work really best when you have a situation when you have young players wanting to gain as much knowledge as they can. They go out and seek people and try and gain as much as they can from them, talk to them and lot of it happens in informal settings. I think the key really is more than anything forced down their throat, it’s for young players is to recognise that they think about the game, think about the questions they ask. If you ask good questions, you get good answers. That is really important.

Two of the current players, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane are idolising you. What do you talk to them?

The fact that I am involved with Rajasthan Royals for a couple of months every year gives me an opportunity to have a lot of conversations not only with the boys of Rajasthan Royals, which I do quite often because I mean when you are with the team for a couple of months, you are in an environment which is pretty relaxed. It could be over the breakfast, or at dinner table or having a couple of drinks in the bar, you are having these conversations all the time. In that sense, the IPL is quite exciting for me because it allows me to have these sort of conversations with these players. Most of the conversations I have had with Ajinkya Rahane and when people say that some of our boys don’t care about Test cricket, that’s completely wrong. Because all they are asking me is how did you do well! They are not worried about a T20 game coming up. They are only interested in knowing how did we do well in England, how did we do well in Australia. Virat Kohli is asking those questions all the time. I don’t think it is not that they don’t care. They care deeply but they were found out against a really good bowling attack on a difficult wicket. And they were not good enough in those particular Test matches. But I think they do care and they ask those questions.

Do they ask you to tell you stories of the past?

I think they are all willing to talk about cricket. There is no doubt about it that the young cricketer is keen for information, is keen for knowledge, is willing to learn but maybe their touch with history is not as good as it used to be because I think they live in a generation where history is not valued as it used to be. Maybe the knowledge on past cricketers isn’t as good as it used to be. They live in the age of internet and they are willing to go to YouTube to watch a Gavaskar play or a Rahul Dravid but I am not sure if they are willing to go into depth to study the history. I think that is where a lot of your stories and conversations can come in and can gain the interest in these youngsters about the history of the game.

Is the Virender Sehwag-Pankaj Roy story true or not?

To be fair, after we got that agonisingly close, people came up to me and were like: How could he play that shot to get out at that stage, you were just four runs away from breaking the record. And I said, “the very reason we were close to breaking that record was because Viru was playing shots like that”. In 410, he had 253 and I had 130-something. I said, look, what got us to 410 was Viru playing like that, so I was not about to go and tell him to change. Though I knew that the record was four runs away, I wasn’t going to tell him to change anything. If I had told him Pankaj Roy at that stage, (he) would have been: “Aeeeen”. I was counting it down and I knew it. I was like four runs to go, I wanted to get back on strike. I hoped I take the strike, get a nick here, hopefully Viru will hit a boundary. And he gets out to the upper cut.

Do oral communication between international cricketers take place?

The IPL has opened up a lot of doors. In some sense, for that transfer of knowledge, and that transfer of knowledge must necessarily happen when you are comfortable with people and in a comfortable environment. For example, someone like a Kevin Pietersen, when he first played at RCB, he would talk to me about spin bowling. About left-arm spin, how one practised against left-arm spin. I see conversations of some of my young players talking to someone like Shane Watson, 'how do you start hitting?' 'How do you practice to be a power-hitter?' 'How do you load up going into hitting a six?' and stuff like that. For example, someone like a Pravin Tambe, he came into the nets at Rajasthan Royals and he spent a lot of time picking the brains of James Faulkner and Brad Hodge who were batting in the nets and constantly asking them. That is incredible about Pravin. He was willing to listen, he was willing to ask questions. He is willing to be inquisitive. I guess playing years and years in the maidans teaches you that. Pravin is constantly asking Hodge 'which ball is difficult to play', 'If I bowl it into pads, do you find more difficult?' 'Should I give it air', 'Should I bowl wide?” He is constantly asking these kind of questions. You can see the improvement happening. You can see someone like a Sanju Samson seeking ou AB de Villiers who is one of his heroes and they went out for a coffee. Such conversations do happen and we need to encourage it a bit more.

What is your best innings outside the sub-continent?

The two innings that gave me the most satisfaction was scoring two fifties in that Test match in Jamaica in 2006. That series was tied at 0-0. I was captain of the side and I was feeling a bit of pressure that India needed to win the series. We went into the last Test match and we had to play on a terrible wicket. You go there, you have a look at the wicket and you know that this Test match was not going to last more than three days. I got a couple of fifties in that game and Sarwan got a fifty for the West Indies in the second innings. If I look back at career, I got a double century at Adelaide but scoring those fifties in really difficult conditions and winning the Test match for India probably gave me the most satisfaction.

Is playing three formats possible for a young cricketer?

I think it comes more naturally to a modern cricketer because he is more used to it. Growing up, I always wanted to be a Test cricketer. I never wanted to be a one-day cricketer. Growing up, all the stories I have heard were about the exploits in Test cricket. My father told me stories about Gavaskar’s 774. My father never spoke to be about anything else. He spoke about GR Viswanath’s 97 against Andy Roberts at Chennai, how he played and how Chandrasekhar was the last man. I grew up in Bangalore hearing stories about Test cricket. I always wanted to be a Test cricketer. That is how I practiced and that is how I played. One-day cricket was there but it was only after I actually started playing and in India those days, playing one-day cricket was almost an afterthought. We played Ranji Trophy for three days and at the end of it, we played a one-day game against the same team. A lot of those time, we would give the players who were not getting a chance, the 13th, 14th and the 15th guy, to play. That was literally the thinking when we first started. It all changed around 1994, 95, 96 when India suddenly saw the explosion of one-day cricket. So many more matches that we started realising that this is important and we suddenly started to realise that we need to be good at this if we were to have any success in international cricket. If you want to play for a long period of time, you need to be good in one-day cricket. For me, it took a bit of time, the transition. I learnt how to adapt and play. But today’s cricketers, if you see right from the start, there are three forms of the game and they need to succeed in all three. I hope they really take the option of succeeding in all three. Succeeding in Test cricket requires a certain type of skills and abilities. Succeeding in Twenty20 requires certain type of skill and ability. And sometimes, they are not the same skills and abilities, but you need to work on these types of skills and abilities and if possible, you can see some type of players like AB de Villiers who are successful in all the formats and I hope the young Indian cricketers really aspire to be good in all the three formats of the game. It’s not going to be easy but you need to practice more. You need to sacrifice a lot more. You need to challenge yourself a lot more. As Test cricket shows you, you need to challenge yourself, practice very differently for Test cricket if you want to succeed.

Can foreign players be invited to play Indian domestic cricket?

I don’t really think there is a ban on foreign players coming in and playing domestic cricket in India. I remember Vikram Solanki and Kabil Ali playing a few years ago. I think we should open up the doors for foreign players who want to come in here and play. They will bring something and they will add. You don’t want six foreign players but you want one or two. If they are willing to come here and if the state association have them in the side, I think there is a lot that they can add.

Do you, as a batsman, feel that off-spinners who are bowling doosra chuck?

I think the ICC has a rule in place. They reviewed a lot of the old footage and they found out that the elbow bent to about 15 degrees was pretty normal and that is what everyone was doing. Glenn McGrath had a slight bend in his elbow up to 15 degrees. I am not suggesting that Glenn McGrath was chucking. They have a system in place and what I am glad about is that they are really enforcing it strictly. They are reviewing people, they are getting people caught. I give them the benefit of the doubt. I always give the bowler the benefit of the doubt. Muttiah Muralitharan went through every test that was humanly possible at that time so you have to give him the benefit of doubt. What the ICC is doing now is they are being vigilant. What they are saying is that if once you are cleared in 2009, you can’t be (not) checked again. You have got to keep monitoring, watching it closely and they see bowlers developing new types of deliveries, then why not go into the lab and have it checked. Personally I don’t think we should see chucking as a crime as such. It is just a technical fault that people have. So if you have a technical fault in the action, you correct that and come back. When you overstep the line, nobody says you are cheating. You say, okay, come back behind the line. And here we are saying, come back within 15 degrees and play the game.

Do you also discuss anger management with young players?

I think one of the important things people talk a lot about and what would be recognised that the young cricketers today are role models and are being watched by so many young people and it is very apparent to me now that i have two young boys they are mimicking everything that the cricketers do. I have realised that my two young boys mimicking the celebrations when a wicket falls, they are mimicking actions, they are mimicking the mannerisms, so I think it is all the more important that the cricketers are aware they are role models and are being watched, so they have to be careful. Also at some level, you also have to respect the fact that people are giving their best and tempers and emotions do boil over at times, so it can happen.

Should wives and girlfriends be accompanying cricketers on tours?

The guys play 10-11 months in a year, so wives, girlfriends – you should be allowed to decide what your partners are irrespective of the gender – on tour. And if you don’t allow them on tour, it will be an even bigger problem and for performances, you can’t start blaming wives and girlfriends. No one blamed players' wives for performances.

Which format would you suggest for youngsters?

Youngsters should aspire to play all the formats. I would be biased towards Test cricket because nothing gives you that kind of high and satisfaction that Test cricket gives you. I think experiencing one-day cricket and T20 cricket is an important part of being a cricketer. Experience of playing a T20 match is as important as playing a Test match.

Will all three formats last?

I think one-day cricket is seriously struggling. I definitely think that one-day cricket without a context is struggling. When you think of one-day cricket from a point of view of Champions Trophy and the World Cup, it is relevant. But I think all the other one-day cricket should be given towards playing the Champions Trophy and the World Cup. And then you’ve got Test cricket and you’ve got the T20 format of the game. Meaningless one-day games and too many one-day games can actually be a problem and it is something that can be cut off. You should play lesser one-day cricket and play more tournaments. So Champions Trophy and World Cup, I would go for it, definitely.

Should one-day cricket spread to smaller centres?

It is a great point and the BCCI does that. You have so many small centres for one-day cricket and all the small centres have grounds today and they are doing a fantastic job. I just see looking at the time, we have three formats and we have 12 months in a year, it is going to be harder and harder on players, talking about the workload.

Do you see yourself as a future India coach or you are happy being a commentator?

I think there is a time and place for everything. I have enjoyed the media side of what I have done. I don’t think it’s easy. I have enjoyed the mentorship thing that I do with Rajasthan Royals for two months. It just fits into where my life is at the moment. That’s just being an honest answer, having two young kids. It’s just a question of balancing how your life is. But yeah, I would love at some stage work with young cricketers. Whether that’s with the Indian coach, I don’t know. It could be as a coach of a Ranji team at some stage. There is time and place for everything.
guru.krishnan@dnaindia.net