'Rahul Dravid needs fair opportunity as India coach, Rohit Sharma must click refresh button': Graeme Smith

Former South Africa captain Graeme Smith believes that India head coach Rahul Dravid should be given a “fair opportunity” to rebuild the team after their easy 209-run defeat to Australia in the World Test Championship (WTC) Final in London recently. At the same time, Smith suggested skipper Rohit Sharma needed to click the refresh button after a long IPL 2023 season with Mumbai Indians (MI) and the WTC Final that followed. While Dravid and the team management were criticised for not including experienced all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin in the playing XI, India’s batters including Cheteshwar Pujara and Shubman Gill failed to live upto expectations. “The biggest challenge in India for a leader is balancing those squads, balancing your tour schedules, the different formats, and those are some of the biggest decisions that are coming ahead of Rahul and his selection team. What do those squads look like, how do they move those teams forward," Smith was quoted as saying by Times of India. “He’s a quality man and a quality performer. He’s shown it right through as a coach. So, you’ve got to give him a fair opportunity now to kind of rebuild India,” added the South African. Rohit Sharma, too, struggled with his bat, with scores of 15 and 43. According to a report by news agency PTI, Rohit is likely to lead India in the upcoming Test series against West Indies in July, but his future as India Test captain remains uncertain. Smith was quick to note that Rohit was going through a rough patch. “One of the biggest challenges of a captain is your own personal performance. The pressure of a leader never goes away. Rohit probably needs to just refresh. His own form hasn’t been probably at a level consistently. We look at the IPL over a number of years now and obviously the WTC final…he is having a bit of a rough patch and often that personal performance can just settle things down a little bit,” said the 42-year-old. “No one is criticizing his captaincy or leadership style. It’s just obviously on the personal performance side, if he can get some really good scores behind him, it takes a lot of that pressure away,” he added. India will get their WTC 2023-25 campaign underway with a two-Test series against West Indies that starts in the Caribbean from 12 July. That will be followed by three ODIs and five T20Is. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.