Benagluru: India’s premier bowler Ravichandran Ashwin feels that former Indian skipper Rahul Dravid has to be the most mindful players about the game that he has ever known.
Speaking during the launch of Aakash Chopra’s book Numbers Do Lie, the off-spinner praised Dravid’s game awareness.
”Rahul has to be the most game-aware person that I have ever known and this attribute often goes unnoticed, but then you have to sit back and admire this trait. Game awareness is often the most underrated parts of the team but when each of the 11 players think and know about their roles it takes the team well ahead of the competition. I witnessed it first hand against England and firmly believe that the English team were far ahead when it came down to game awareness than the other teams,” Ashwin said.
Ashwin was also asked to compare Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid since he had played with both of them.
“With Sachin you will have to consider the 1990s and early 2000s when he was just fantastic,” Ashwin said.
“Rahul Bhai was fabulous when it came to thinking about the game and he not only added value with his advice but also made sure that you are on the same page. His advices would not only be restricted to batting, well you associate batsmen with only their batting and they would more often than not be full of themselves and would only speak about their game. With Rahul bhai it was very different, he understood almost all the skillsets which is needed in the game and his nuances were fabulous. He also won quite a few matches as a captain and I am not one bit surprised,” Ashwin added.
Former Australian opener Matthew Hayden too heaped praise on the current India U19 coach and compared him to Ivan Lendl.
“Talking about game awareness and there was no better person than Rahul Dravid. There was no sense of superstition in his game and the way he setup his entire innings was just fabulous. He is probably the Ivan Lendl of cricket,” said Hayden.
