'I am enjoying captaincy'

Source: Cricket India Times     Date: December 01, 2005

Captain Rahul Dravid spoke to Makarand Waingankar on India's recent winning run and other hot issues. Excerpts:

With India winning eight out of 11 matches in the last month, what have been the gains and losses?

We certainly have rediscovered the winning habits. This is our big gain but apart from that the young players have performed well. In a team game team spirit is of paramount importance and we exhibited that a lot. I am happy that the boys looked confident in what they did. About losses all I can say is that I haven't observed anything but one gets the feeling that the boys know they will have to maintain the standard that they have shown in the past one month.

There is a visible change of approach, attitude, level of skills, fielding, confidence level now...

All these things are meticulously planned by the team management and that includes the support staff. They too have a job to perform. The boys know they have to work hard to make the unit more effective. And to do that they need to apply themselves a lot. It's a credit to the boys that they have realised the importance of the work ethic in this competitive world.

The responsibility of captaincy seems to have the desired effect on your batting.

When a player plays as a captain, he has to realise he has to shoulder the responsibility of getting the team to perform. And here I may say a captain is a player first. If he manages the responsibility of a captain and performs, things are much smoother. It's too early for me to say much. I will try and maintain what I have done but then it's a game. You never know what will happen in future. I am really enjoying the role given to me.

Was shifting of batting numbers experiment or was it strategy?

We wanted to test the potential of players. How a player responds to a particular challenge, how does he go about, what approach he adopts, whether he is comfortable in the role that's given to him. To know all this we have to get them in those slots. Had we not done that we wouldn't have known the batting potential of Irfan. Let's not talk about experiment. It has to be strategy but when we get the players to do what they haven't done before, they are given confidence. This is giving us quite a few options.

What's the approach you and Chappell adopt for building the team?

Our endeavour is to try and get the players to perform at their optimum level. For a player to succeed, we need to work on him. Don't expect a player to perform when he is not guided as to what he should do to perform. The most important aspect is for a player to know what is expected of him. This is the approach we have adopted and it's worked well.

Many former captains have said that it's a waste of time sitting in the selection committee without a vote. What do you feel?

I wouldn't like to say publicly what I think of the system but I suppose as a captain I must try and get the best out of the 15 that I am given. A captain is invited to voice his opinion and he should do that.

All the countries take advantage of playing to their strength in the home series. Since factors other than cricket appear to spoil the show in India, what should BCCI do?

All the countries play to their strengths. Would they ever give that advantage to the touring side? You can't change the nature of a pitch. But why not have home advantage? It's pointless interfering with the curator's job.