Rahul Dravid on managing workload of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma - 'We have to priortise certain tournaments'

Indian team’s head coach Rahul Dravid said the management is prioritising certain tournaments like the Border-Gavaskar series and World Test Championship while managing the workload of seniors likeVirat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. In this cricket-heavy calendar, Dravid stressed on picking right players for particular series as they don’t want pile of injured players just before the start of any important tournament. Speaking to the media ahead of the final ODI against New Zealand in Indore, the former captain addressed this issue.

“We need to give certain priorities to certain white-ball tournaments due to the amount of cricket that we’re playing. The Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the World Test Championship are very important for us. There are certain white-ball tournaments that we have to prioritize,” said Dravid.

The former India captainalso said rest to Rohit and Kohli following the ODI series was the need of the hour as the management wants them to turn up fresh ahead of the Border-Gavaskar series against Australia that begins on February 9th in Nagpur.

“The priority after the T20 World Cup has been these six games and Virat has played all these six games. He will get a break, along with Rohit and a few other guys in the next week so that they come refreshed on the 2nd for a good one week camp before we play Australia. So we just have to prioritize certain formats,” the head coach added.

Sharing his thoughts on having outright wicketkeepers in the squad nowadays, Rahul said the time has gone when keepers were picked on their singular ability; now for any keeper to get picked in the squad, he must be a very good batter first. Adding India’s pool depth gives them this leverage of having multiple keeper-batters across formats Dravid had some encouraging words for the newly-picked Jitesh Sharma as well.

“The days of a specialist wicket-keeper are gone unfortunately. We’re lucky that all the guys in contention have done well as batters. Be it Ishan Kishan or KS Bharath or KL Rahul, unfortunately Rishabh Pant is injured. But all these guys are wicket-keeping batters, and in this day you have to contribute with the bat significantly. Even Jitesh Sharma in the T20 format, he has the ability to bat at a very good pace as he’s shown in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the IPL,” said Dravid.

After the ODI series, India and New Zealand will face off in the three-match T20Is.