Rahul Dravid has heaped praise on former India captain Rohit Sharma for the evolution of the Indian cricket team into an aggressive batting unit, especially in the T20I format. Dravid said that the Indian team in T20I format is so aggressive that there are other teams looking at them and thinking that they need to emulate the Men in Blue. Dravid’s assessment of the current Team India outfit in the shortest format of the game was that the side was “changing what T20 cricket is like”.
“India is absolutely changing what T20 cricket is like. Indian batting in T20 cricket at the moment is off the charts. It’s close to 300 (runs per game), and everyone else in the world is now having to catch up. In the space of three or four years, you’re seeing that everyone’s looking at India and saying, ‘Shucks man, we’ve got to match this,’” Dravid said in an interview with Breakfast with Champions.
WATCH: Rahul Dravid on Breakfast with Champions
Dravid credited Rohit, from his stint as the Indian T20 captain, for this evolution in the T20 mindset.
“Certainly, from the time I came in, a lot of the discussion with Rohit was around how we wanted to play a more aggressive brand of cricket, and we tried (to do just that). We started right from the beginning because we could see that that’s the way the game was evolving, and Rohit’s got to take a large credit for that, right? To move the team in a particular direction. Play the game in a lot more aggressive and a lot more positive manner. “I’m glad that India have sort of kept going in that direction to the point where India’s kind of lately,” Dravid said.
While saying that he only owed a part of the credit for this evolution, Dravid again highlighted Rohit’s role as the leader of the outfit.
“It has to be driven by the leaders, right? It has to be driven by the captain. It has to be driven by the players because they’ve got to do it, right? They’ve got to take the risks. You might be giving them a certain amount of security, but in the end, they are the ones who’ve got to take those chances, take those risks,” Dravid added.
