By Khabar Rojana 
Former India head coach Rahul Dravid recently came forward and shed light on a variety of topics. He heaped massive praise on India’s U19 batch that he overlooked and the immense potential that the country continues to show in the sport.
Former India head coach Rahul Dravid recently came forward and sang praises for his U19 batch. He expressed gratitude for the fact that several players from the batch went on to play for the Indian team. He named the likes of Sanju Samson and Rishabh Pant as some of the standout performers at a very young age.
He pointed out how both Samson and Pant showed immense talent from a young age, and rising from such a young age, the duo won the T20 World Cup 2024 for India under Dravid’s coaching as well.
Furthermore, the former head coach named Shubman Gill and Abhishek Sharma as some of the biggest names from his U19 batch that he looked over.
“When you see Rishabh for the first time, you could feel that this guy is something different. If I look back at the 2016 batch… Even someone like Khaleel Ahmed – he’s sort of still finding his way, not being able to crack that way. As you move on, Shubman Gill was pretty much in the next batch. There was Prithvi Shaw,” Dravid said in a video on Ravichandran Ashwin’s YouTube channel.
“When I first saw Sanju Samson, I worked with him, but when I first saw Sanju as an 18-year-old, he looked like a million bucks. So many names are not mentioned, and I would be unfair [to them]. It’s not one kid that makes you, ‘wow,’ [but] it’s just the talent coming through the Indian system that makes you go wow,” he added.
Dravid talked about winning U19 World Cup with India in 2016
Furthermore, Dravid talked about how he was not obsessed with winning the U19 World Cup with India in 2016; he opined that he was more focused on the kind of preparation that he could have given to the youngsters for the tournament.
“We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare that U-19 batch, and I wasn’t very obsessed about the result. What fascinated me was the kind of preparation we can give for the next batch of U-19 players. That became the exciting part. Saying that we’ve got another World Cup in 2 years. It wasn’t just about the World Cup. It was about giving exposure to not just the 15 guys who would be part of the World Cup squad,” Dravid said.
Raveena Kumari