He felt an instant connect with the job. Indian team’s youngsters have proven to be the solid base of the world dominance the side promises now. And behind the emergence of the likes of KL Rahul, Karun Nair, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar and many more, lies the huge contribution of Dravid.

“After I was done playing, I did a few things – commentary, doing corporate speeches. But the thing I enjoyed the most was coaching. Commentary was nice and great, but you just don’t get a fulfillment at the end of the day. Being involved with young people, their lives gave me the most satisfaction. So, purely for selfish reasons I am doing something that gives me satisfaction... Also, I figured out that I can do it at this stage, because it will get tougher as you grow older – coaching has also become physically demanding,” said Rahul Dravid as quoted by The Field, at the Go Sports Athletes’ Conclave.

“We have often heard ‘failure is the stepping stone to success’. But it’s just that you can fail badly and can also fail well. Failing well is very, very important. When we fail, we often tend to brush things under the carpet. We blame someone, we always tend to find an excuse. When you do things like that, you lose an opportunity to fail well. When you fail, you have an opportunity to understand yourself,” said Dravid.

“I said to myself: ‘I am struggling so much. So there is no point about worrying about what’s going to happen in the future. I was not willing to think whether I was going to be dropped or we were going to lose’. I said: ‘I am going to just focus on the simplest thing’. And in cricket, it’s just focusing on one ball at a time. For me, it was a really good lesson that day,” he added.