Australia’s legendary batsman Greg Chappell has lauded Rahul Dravid for creating an amazing pool of young Indian players and opined that he “picked” the Australian “brains” to create a solid domestic structure that has served as a feeder line for his country’s national team.
Chappell further recognized that India and England have left Australia behind in finding and grooming young talent for international cricket.
“India have got their act together and that’s largely because Rahul Dravid has picked our brains, seen what we’re doing and replicated it in India and with their much larger (population) base. I think we’ve already lost our position as the best at identifying talent and bringing it though. I think England are doing it better than us now and India are doing it better than us,” Chappell told cricket.com.au.
Greg Chappell cited India’s recent Test series win over Australia down under when a second-string Indian side first drew the Test in Sydney and then a gradual India B team beat Australia in Gabba, Brisbane, for the first time in 32 years, to clinch the Border Gavaskar Trophy for the second time in a row in Australia.
Chappell feels the victory showcased India’s highly effective player development system as even their rookies were armed with extensive international experience.
“When you look at the Indian team that played in the Brisbane Test that had three or four fresh players, and everyone said, ‘This is India’s second XI’ — those guys had played (extensively) for India A. And in all sorts of different conditions, not just in India. So when they get picked, they’re not tyros at all, they’re quite hardened international cricketers,” Chappell said.
He further called for major overhauls to Australia’s domestic cricket structure and said, “We’ve got full-time cricketers, so why do we have to be constrained by the regular timing of our cricket season?. We’ve got access to these guys for basically 10 months of the year.”
“One of the things I believe would make a big difference would be trying to play a full block of Sheffield Shield cricket so that guys get a run at red-ball cricket. Playing five Shield games and then 50-over cricket and then BBL and then finishing the end of the Shield season just breaks up that opportunity to develop long-form batting, which is a good foundation for the other formats anyway,” he added.
(PTI inputs)
