Rahul Dravid's response to continuous praise for grooming India youngsters is of gold standard

About an hour after India’s historic Test win at the Gabba in Brisbane which also ensured India won the Border-Gavaskar trophy 2-1 for the second time in a row, Rahul Dravid’s name started trending on Twitter. It went from No.9 to No.2 in no time – the top trend obviously being INDvAUS. Since then, the gratitude for Dravid has kept on flowing.

Five days after India’s victory in Brisbane, former India captain Rahul Dravid finally gave his first reaction on the praise he is receiving for mentoring the likes of Rishabh Pant, Shubman Gill, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, and Washington Sundar during their India A and U19 days.

Keeping true to his modest nature, Dravid refused to take any credit for the success of India’s young and inexperienced cricketers in Australia.

"Ha ha, unnecessary credit, the boys deserve all the praise,” Dravid told the Sunday Express.

Dravid was the India A and U19 head coach when the likes of Pant, Agarwal, Sundar, Siraj, Gill and Thakur were coming through the ranks. His inputs, wisdom and lessons have always helped them improve their game – something which all these cricketers have mentioned time and again at different stages of their careers.

India’s strong bench strength was one of the main reasons why India went on to beat Australia in Australia despite injuries to a bunch of their first XI players including Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja, Jassprit Bumrah and Ravichandran Ashwin.

India had to field 20 cricketers in the four-match series and hand debuts to as many as five cricketers.

Fortunately for India, none of the young cricketers was overawed by the big stage and in fact, almost all of them played their part in India’s series win.