Former India head coach Rahul Dravid disagrees with his successor Gautam Gambhir’s stance on eradicating superstar culture from Indian cricket. Gambhir has, on several occasions, said that individual achievements should no longer be celebrated and that team success must be placed above everything else. While there is nothing wrong with his vision, Dravid feels individual success is a building block of the bigger goal.
Dravid played in an era that had no shortage of superstars in Indian cricket. He, along with Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwag, formed the famed core that took Indian cricket to unprecedented heights. While that team did not win as many trophies as the current unit, it remains legendary in its own right. Dravid does not entirely see eye to eye with Gambhir, but believes that becoming a superstar in India requires immense hard work and sacrifice.
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“Any sport needs its heroes, and I don’t think people become heroes without performances. You can’t capture the imagination of a nation if you don’t deliver on the field, especially in India, where you get a lot of praise for what you do, but also a lot of brickbats. There’s a lot of scrutiny and constant focus on you. So to become a legend or a superstar in India means you’ve done a lot of things right, and in the process, you’ve also helped your team win,” Dravid told Wisden on the Scoop podcast.
‘Not easy to replace guys like Kohli, Rohit, Ashwin’
Dravid weighed in on India’s recent performances in Test cricket, which under Gambhir, have not been in the healthiest of states. While the white-ball unit has gone from strength to strength, winning the last two ICC tournaments – the Champions Trophy in 2025 and the T20 World Cup in 2026 – the Test side has struggled. In the past two years, India have been whitewashed twice at home – 3-0 against New Zealand in 2024 and 2-0 against South Africa last year. For Dravid, red-ball cricket remains paramount, but he also pointed out that with so much cricket being played, players can find it difficult to switch between formats.
“The passion to do well in red-ball cricket is definitely there. We’ve had a couple of series where we haven’t performed as well as an Indian team, and that can happen. We are also missing a few key players, with some of the big names having recently retired – Rohit, Virat and Ashwin – and it is not easy to replace players like that. But Indian cricket remains very strong. I still believe the Indian team will be competitive in every format it plays. It may take a little time, but hopefully this season we will be able to turn things around,” added Dravid.
“Red-ball cricket is still very important. There are still players who want to play red-ball cricket. Among players, there is a strong sense that it is probably the toughest format of the game and something that brings a lot of personal satisfaction when you succeed in it. But there is also a lot of white-ball cricket being played, and we have to be realistic about that. Many of these players today are having to juggle multiple formats, and it is not always easy because they may not get as much time to prepare for red-ball cricket as my generation did. We effectively had fewer formats, and when I think about the preparation that went into some of the Test series I played, I feel the current players, not because they don’t want to, but because of the volume of cricket, are sometimes unable to find that same balance.”