India vs England 2022: Virat Kohli an inspiring figure, don’t look at his 100s as success, says India coach Rahul Dravid | Cricket News – Times of India

While his last Test hundred may have come a good two and a half years ago and he has been averaging in the mid 20s since 2020, India coach Rahul Dravid is still confident that star batter and former skipper Virat Kohli has it in him to make impactful performances for Team India.
“He’s the most hard-working guy I have come across — his hunger, desire and the way he prepares and looks after himself. Even the way he played in the practice match at Leicester, he was keen on playing against our bowlers like Bumrah. He’s ticking all the right boxes. I don’t think he needs any extra motivation,” said Dravid.
“You go through such phases and it’s not about focusing on those three figures. People see only getting a hundred as a success, but as a coaches’ perspective, we want match-winning contributions from him. He inspires a lot of people in the dressing room,” the India coach added.

To illustrate his point, Dravid highlighted Kohli’s 79 in the first innings of the third Test at Cape Town as an instance of a good knock on a tough pitch without it being a three-figure knock.
Since he took over as coach in November, India have had four different Test captains in the seven games he has been in charge and if Jasprit Bumrah walks out for the toss on Friday, it will be five different Test captains in eight matches. Surely not great for stability.

Dravid, though, chose to look at the issue philosophically.
“It is what it is. When I took this job, even I would have not predicted so many captains. There have been unfortunate injuries. Sometimes we have to balance out workloads of players. It is not something that you start off thinking you want to do; but if the situations arise, you react to them, and in spite of the number of
captains, we have played good cricket,” he said.