New Delhi: Team India’s outgoing head coach Ravi Shastri on Monday said that Rahul Dravid has inherited a great team and he can only raise the level as a man in charge. Rahul Dravid will replace Shastri in Team India and the former India captain’s first responsibility will be the domestic T20 International and Test series against New Zealand (India vs New Zealand), which will start from November 17. Shastri became the director of the Indian cricket team for eight months from the tour of England in 2014 to the 2015 World Cup. He was sacked in 2016, but was appointed the head coach of the Indian team on 13 July 2017 and then took over as the head coach of the Indian team. Made a great pair with Kohli. The highlight of his tenure was winning two-Test series one after the other in Australia, but in the meantime, the team could not win any ICC tournament.
Ravi Shastri said on Rahul Dravid being appointed coach, ‘He has a man in Rahul Dravid who has inherited a great team. I think with his experience he can only raise the level in the times to come. There are still players here who will play for 3-4 more years which is very important. It’s not a team change and it will make the biggest difference.’ Shastri had great success with captain Virat Kohli and in both periods Team India was successful in winning the two-Test series against Australia in Australia.
Ravi Shastri said, ‘Virat is still there. He has done a wonderful job as the leader of the team. He has been the biggest ambassador of Test cricket in the last five years. A lot of credit goes to him. The way he thinks, how does he want the team to play the game and the team is also confined around him. India was knocked out of the World Cup on Sunday after Afghanistan failed to beat New Zealand.
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Shastri said, ‘I am mentally exhausted, but it is permissible to be like this at my age. These people are physically and mentally tired. Six months in a bio bubble…. We would have ideally liked a big gap between the IPL and the World Cup. This is when the big games come and when you are under pressure. In this case, you are not charged as much as you should be. And this is no excuse. We take defeat because we are not afraid to lose. You will lose a game trying to win. Here we did not try to win, because that X-factor was wrong.
