Rahul Dravid and Virat Kohli bowled in nets© Twitter
South Africa is a pace bowler’s paradise. The bounce and swing on offer often make travelling teams ditch their traditional plans for a pace-heavy attack in a bid to ace the South African challenge. As the Indian team reached Centurion for the first Test, expectations were from the management to field 4 pacers and just one spinner. As fans looked to track the practice sessions to understand the bowling composition India will proceed with, many were left surprised to see the head coach Rahul Dravid bowl.
Ahead of the toss on Day 1 of the first Test, Dravid tried to bowl medium pace in the nets, producing never-seen-before scenes. Here’s the video:
— Nihari Korma (@NihariVsKorma) December 26, 2023
Seeing Dravid bowl even his former India teammate Sanjay Bangar was left surprised.
“Well, he did most of the things that were asked of him from a player point of view – opened the batting, batted at 3,5,6, kept wicket. So this is something that I am surprised with. I have never seen Rahul Dravid do this. But it’s always good because as coaches you do things that you aren’t used to so to see. And there’s nothing wrong with his action; he seems pretty aligned and just has to add a little bit of piece. Otherwise, he looks pretty alright,” he said in a chat on Star Sports.
Seeing Dravid take up bowling in the practice, even Kohli rolled his arm and tried bowling a few medium-pace deliveries. For Kohli, it wasn’t something new, as he has bowled in the nets on multiple occasions. In fact, Kohli even picked up a wicket in the ODI World Cup 2023
For the unversed, Dravid hasn’t just kept wickets for India but also bowled occasionally in international cricket. In fact, he has a total of 5 wickets to his name in international cricket (4 in ODIs and 1 in Test).
Topics mentioned in this article
