Give him time: Ravi Shastri puts his support behind current India coach Rahul Dravid

Former India coach Ravi Shastri put his support behind current coach Rahul Dravid saying that the latter should be given more time before judgement is passed on his stint.
“It takes time. It took me time and it’s going to take him time too. But Rahul has an advantage that he was at the NCA, he was with the A team as well and now he’s here too. He is experienced with the contemporary cricketer players and with the system. Give him time,” Shastri said in an interview to Sports Tak.
Shastri also said that in India, the public memory is pretty short saying that when he was coach, India won two Asia Cups but those achievements are seldom talked about. Only when India fail to do well in these tournaments, then only it’s brought back into the collective psyches.
“In our country, public memory is short. If you have to win, you have to win. During my tenure, we won two Asia Cups, but no one remembers. Has anyone mentioned Asia Cup? We’ve won it twice. And no one talks about it. But when we lose in Asia Cup, then the tournament comes into the picture. Why?,” he added.
Dravid’s contract is set to expire after the 2023 ODI World Cup with his extension depending a lot on how India perform in this tournament in their own backyard.
In the interview, Shastri also said that the core focus of the Indian team should be playing more matches of the same format depending on the format of the World Cup in that year.
“There is too much cricket. The volume of cricket is so much. For all you know, India might be playing a Test series somewhere but a T20 tournament is going on somewhere else with an Indian team. Many times when I was coach, we were in one country, India were in another country playing Sri Lanka or someone proper. You have to see what is important in that year and accordingly get the players to primarily focus on playing those games. So, if there’s a World Cup of 50-over cricket coming, emphasis should be on the 50-over format. If it’s a T20 World Cup year, emphasis should be on that format and you have to decide who your nucleus of 15-18 players are and they should be playing,” he said.