India head coach Rahul Dravid on Saturday declined to reveal details of any internal conversations he might have had with the selectors on Test captain Virat Kohli's white-ball captaincy, saying they are not for public purpose. Dravid's comments come after Kohli gave up T20I captaincy post the end of the Mens T20 World Cup and had been removed from ODI captaincy just before leaving for South Africa, with Rohit Sharma being made white-ball captain.
"To be honest, that's the role of the selectors and I am not going to get into individual conversations that I might or might not have had. It's not the place and the time to be doing that and discussing that. And what internal conversations I have had with people is certainly not going to come out in the media and I am not going to start telling people publicly what conversations I have had," said an assertive-yet-gentle Dravid in the pre-series virtual press conference.
In the pre-departure press conference, Kohli had directly contradicted the words of BCCI President Sourav Ganguly on being asked to continue as T20I captain for the reason that there cannot be two white-ball captains. Dravid, himself a former India captain, chose to shift his focus on the Test series against South Africa, starting from Sunday in Centurion, terming it as 'first challenge away from home' under his coaching stint.
"From a Test team's perspective, there are series to win and it starts with this one. We had a good series against New Zealand. But this is our first sort of challenge away from home. It's an important series from that perspective to try and put our best foot forward and play some good cricket. In the larger scheme of things, it counts for World Test Championship points. That's a goal, not immediate but in the long term, it is something to keep in the back of the mind and keep to push towards. This team wants to keep improving and become better as a group."
Dravid praised Kohli's efforts in making India a top team in Test cricket. "Virat has played a huge role in that. As a player and as a leader, he has been fantastic. So, certainly looking forward to him carrying that forward to pushing and challenging this team. He's one of those players who really love Test cricket and looks forward to compete and play in it. Hopefully, he has a great series and will benefit the team as well."
Dravid further said that chats with Ajinkya Rahane have been nice and he was in good mental space. "Conversations with Ajinkya Rahane have been very positive and very good. He has trained really well this week and practised really well. It's been no different to actually have any conversation with most of the players. He seems to be in a really good space."
The 48-year-old highlighted the mantra of batting contributions from everyone in the playing eleven. "One of the things we are trying to talk to the group is these kinds of series are actually won by good team performances. Everyone needs to play their part. You can't just rely on a Virat Kohli or (Cheteshwar) Pujara or one of the guys to do the job. If you want to be successful here, you need contributions from everyone in our top seven and even from the lower order, as we know the value of their contributions."
"In games that can be slightly more low-scoring than other parts of the world, every sort of contribution is going to be important. Puji is an important part of that line-up, as is anyone else. It is not a focus on one name, be it be Kohli, Pujara, Rahane, Iyer, Rahul, or Agarwal, every one of them is going to have a role to play in the series if we have to be competitive. It's very rare that in a series like this, one player is going to score in every single game and dominate the series."
"I would love for that to happen from our side. But I know it's rare to happen and we know we will need contributions from everyone, even the lower order as well. So, that is what we are looking forward to, instead of focusing on one or two individuals. The form that they are in, we know their quality, ability and a lot of them have contributed and played a big part in lots of overseas wins for India over the last few years. So, hopefully, all of that can come together and we can see some good performances over the next couple of weeks, three weeks rather," concluded Dravid.