Mental health being important, resource like Paddy Upton will be helpful: Rahul Dravid

Rahul Dravid. Upton, who had four fruitful years from 2008 to 2011 under Gary Kirsten is back at Dravid's insistence and will now help the elite Indian players cope up with the pressure cooker scenario going into the T20 World Cup in Australia. "With so much cricket being played, the mental health side of cricket is very important and having a resource like him (Upton) will really be helpful to the group," Dravid told BCCI.Tv. Dravid also feels that Upton's familiarity with Indian cricket set-up will prove to be helpful.

"Travelling as players in international cricket, we do understand the mental side of the game and we are lucky to get someone like Paddy on board because he has that experience of being with the Indian team during 2011 World Cup and even a little before that. "Most importantly he (Upton) is familiar with most Indian players having worked with them at IPL level or in the Indian team. "He is familiar with our culture and how the Indian team functions. (It) seemed like a really good fit for us, to tap into his knowledge as we look to build the team for the World Cup," added Dravid. My role is to create environment for players to grow: UptonUpton, who has had his own unique people skills to deal with individual players, wants to be seen as a facilitator of optimum performance level from players in top-flight competition. "Everybody has a natural motivational flow and part of my role is to help individuals find that natural motivation flow and for that we need to set up an environment that allows people to be themselves and to flourish," Upton said. To prove his point, he gave an analogy of how a gardener needs to create fertile land to grow beautiful flowers. "If I give a simple analogy is to grow beautiful