Asia Cup 2022: Default ‘captain’ Rahul Dravid’s test begins in his absence

With multiple captains this year, head coach had to attend selection meetings, take all tough calls and scramble to put together a settled combination for the Asia Cup in UAE and T20 World Cup in Australia.DUBAI: For a man who emphasizes on ‘process’ more than results, Rahul Dravid’s journey as Team India’s head coach, leading to the T20 World Cup, has been put to test. When he took over from Ravi Shastri after the T20 World Cup debacle, India aimed at playing a specific style of cricket, besides having a stable core for the playing XI. Even as Rohit Sharma assumed all-format captaincy by March, Dravid remained the captain of the ship all through. Unavailability of top players prompted India to field seven captains across formats in the last eight months. For a man who has forever harped on the need for consistency, Dravid’s journey as Team India coach has ironically been a topsy turvy one. Unlike the preceding team management, when then captain Virat Kohli called the shots with Shastri majorly working on executing the plans and managing the players, Dravid has been in the driver’s seat by default. From attending selection meetings to managing the workload of his marquee players, ‘the wall’ of Indian cricket has been enduring the roughest of environments. The results in bilateral T20I cricket point at India’s supremacy in the format. Yet, one can’t dismiss the underlying anxiety over the team composition as the T20 World Cup draws closer. Besides the regular overwhelming hype around the India-Pakistan matches, the Asia Cup here is significant for Team India to finally settle down with a set of players.

When the home T20I series against West Indies concluded in February, Dravid had asserted that he didn’t want to cast