Vikram Rathour, the team’s outgoing batting coach, is aware that India will soon face a difficult transition period, but after working with the talent pool, he believes the team is prepared to manage it as long as it happens in a “controlled and gradual manner”.
Even though Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma will continue to play Tests and ODIs for the time being, India will need to deal with a transition period as these players approach the end of their careers in a few years.
“It is never going to be easy to replace people of Rohit and Virat’s calibre,” Rathour, also a former selector, told PTI in an exclusive interview.
“The recently-concluded series against Zimbabwe (on Sunday) gave us some glimpse into how the T20 team will look like in future. But we still have a few years in Test and ODI cricket to get to that point,” said one of the key members of Rahul Dravid’s coaching team.
Rathour has an intimate understanding of the reservoir of talent in Indian cricket, having held positions as a national selector and one of the senior team’s coaches. He finds this comforting.
“I won’t be too concerned about it. We have a lot of depth in Indian cricket. There are lots of very talented and skilful players who are coming through the system. The only thing we need to make sure is the transition is done in a controlled manner. It needs to be gradual.
He believes that the younger players will be established and will make up the core of the team for the next ten years by the time Rohit and Kohli wave adieu to all forms.
“I am hoping that by then, players like Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Yashasavi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel to name a few, would establish themselves and will make the transition smooth.
“In ODIs also, we have experienced players like Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya to take over,” Rathour said in a confident analysis.
In the same way that Rohit and Kohli supported India’s batting for over ten years, Gill and Jaiswal may be the players of the future ten years.
“There are many exciting players coming through but these two are equipped to play all three formats for a long time. They are going to be the backbone of Indian batting in years to come,” the former Punjab skipper said.
Rathour was a good sounding board for Dravid in the last three years and when he says that Rinku Singh would make a good Test batter, the statement does carry weight.
“When I see him (Rinku) bat in nets, I can’t find any technical reasons why Rinku cannot be a successful Test batter. I understand he has made his name as a terrific finisher in T20 cricket but if you look at his first-class record, he is averaging in high 50s.
“He (Rinku) is also blessed with a very calm temperament. So all these factors indicate that if given an opportunity, he can develop into a Test cricketer,” Rathour said.
“Always told Virat to believe in his methods”
Rathour accepted that Kohli’s prolonged period of weakness following the 2019 World Cup was a “phase that everyone has to go through” in response to questions about it that he would field at every other news conference during his tenure.
“There were no technical issues that we worked on specifically during this phase. The constant messaging to him was to keep working hard and believe in his methods. Eventually he came back stronger and an even better player,” he said.
Rahul gave us space and honest feedback
Prior to their 1996 Test debuts against England in the same series, Rathour and Dravid had already faced off in domestic cricket matches.
Their combined three-decade friendship was beneficial when they joined the back-room crew.
“Rahul is the best coach that I have worked with, who gives you lots of space to work, is open to suggestions and will provide you an honest feedback.
“One of the first discussions we had was about changing the batting template in T20 cricket. We agreed that we needed to bring in more intent and aggression in our batting approach,” he revealed.
Rathour said a case in point was Axar Patel, who fixed their problem of a decent batting option at number eight.
“That made a massive difference and gave the batters in top order lot more freedom to bat.”
Axar was always a good batter and all he needed was opportunity to express himself fearlessly with an “uncomplicated technique”.