Irfan Pathan recalls how Dravid raised his and MS Dhoni's spirits after horror World Cup 2007 exit

India crashed out of 2007 World Cup after losing to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in league stages.

India didn’t exactly have one of their best World Cups in 2007 when the event was held in the West Indies, as despite becoming the first team to score a total of 400 or more in the tournament history; the Men in Blue lost two out of their three matches and were eliminated in the league stages.

Rahul Dravid captained India in this World Cup tournament which had some young stars in Irfan Pathan, MS Dhoni, Robin Uthappa, Dinesh Karthik, and others. Unfortunately, India lost to Bangladesh and then Sri Lanka, crashing out of the tournament.

This failure also brought an end to Greg Chappell’s tenure as the team’s head coach.

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The morale hit rock bottom in the dressing room with Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag even admitting contemplating retirement. However, Irfan Pathan lauded the captaincy and leadership of Rahul Dravid in those testing times, which is not spoken much of.

“Many know that Dada was my first captain and he backed me a lot. Anil Kumble could’ve captained a lot more games for India. MS Dhoni has achieved everything. But I loved playing under Dravid because there was proper communication under him. Many don’t speak about Dravid’s captaincy, we created a world record while chasing targets under him,” Irfan told Sports Tak during Instagram Live chat.

Under Dravid’s captaincy, India won its first-ever Test match in South Africa and won a Test series in England after 21 years. Also, India made the world record of winning 17 straight matches while chasing in ODI matches.

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Irfan Pathan also recalled how Dravid raised the spirits of Dhoni and other youngsters in the team including him.

“Three days after we were out of the 2007 WC, we all were sitting in a room deeply dejected. That’s when Dravid called us and we went to watch ‘300’ movie. After some time, he said to me ‘Irfan, this is not the end of the world, you played a lot of cricket and will play more in the future as well,” Dravid said.

“It was bad that we lost, you and Dhoni will go on and play a lot of cricket for India’. His words made us feel like we are not dead but still alive,” Irfan recalls Dravid’s words.

(hindustantimes.com inputs)