Big teams should play Zimbabwe more: Lalchand Rajput

Zimbabwe team and the public, one man who's excited for this long-pending tour by the Indian team is former India opener Lalchand Rajput. For someone who has been associated with Zimbabwe cricket first as a head coach (since June 2018) and then as a technical director (June 2022 onwards), Rajput has by now developed an emotional bond with the game in the African nation.

Excerpts from an interview that Rajput gave to TOI from Harare while monitoring Zimbabwe's daily practice sessions…How excited are your boys for the forthcoming tour of India -the first against India since 2016?It's a great opportunity for Zimbabwe players to play against India and they are really looking forward to it. After having a very successful outing against Bangladesh, our spirits are very high.

We will carry that momentum into the India series. Any Indian team will be a tough side to beat, but Zimbabwe will definitely not make things easy for them.

This series will give you a chance to catch up with many old cricketing friends from India...It will be good to catch up with my old friends, especially VVS Laxman (NCA head, India head coach for this tour), and other members of India's support staff, as some of them were under me when I was the batting coach at NCA. Players like KL Rahul, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Deepak Hooda, Sanju Samson, Rahul Tripathi were under me at the specialist batting academy and Shikhar Dhawan and Axar Patel were with me on a couple of tours with India A, where I was the coach.