Legendary Rahul Dravid on Sunday said Indian cricket has become an “extremely powerful” force, thanks to the growing talent pool that now extends to even the remotest corners of the country. Dravid, who masterminded India’s T20 World Cup triumph, said a strong club cricket culture has a lot to do with breaking the old trend of city cricketers dominating the step-up to the national team. “If you look at Indian cricket today, Indian cricket is extremely strong, it’s extremely powerful. One of the big reasons for that is that talent comes from everywhere, from all over the country,” Dravid said during the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Mount Joy Cricket Club.
“I think if you go back to the time of, say, GR Vishwanath or even when I was starting my career, most of the talent was from big cities or some other states.”
“Even though they were talented kids from smaller towns, they had to come to big cities to play cricket. But today I think in Indian cricket you see that kids come from everywhere,” he added.
Dravid said this is being reflected in the standards of domestic cricket in India.
“You just have to look at the level of the Ranji Trophy. In the old days when you were playing in the South Zone, as well as playing Hyderabad or Tamil Nadu, I think it's fair to say, without being disrespectful, that with a lot of other teams you couldn't take it for granted, but you could certainly take it a bit more easy.
“I don't think there's any team in the South Zone today that you can go to and say you can beat comfortably,” he added.
Praising the structure of club cricket in the country, particularly in Karnataka, Dravid said the system has allowed the sport to remain accessible to all.
“We need clubs to be strong. We need cricket not to be concentrated in the hands of a few people. We need cricket to be equal, to be present everywhere.
“You can't have talent and facilities concentrated in just one or two places. To make the most of talent, we need to make sure that children have access to good infrastructure everywhere,” he said.
The 51-year-old former Indian captain then briefly reviewed his club career as a youngster to underline the need for such a system to thrive.
“After practice, HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) would give us two eggs and a small glass of milk. I would always stay behind to get that glass of milk and those eggs. Not because I wanted the milk and the eggs.
“But I wanted to sit and listen to people like BK Kumar or Nandan talking about cricket. And it used to be a lot of fun to listen to them and learn so much from them,” Dravid said.
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