“Never Be Like Virender Sehwag”: Rahul Dravid on how he chose a different path to success

Rahul Dravid, the current head coach of the Indian cricket team, was one of the most talented smashers of his game days. The former India captain made his Test and ODI debut in 1996 and subsequently achieved scores of 13288 and 10889 runs in the two formats, respectively. He has also been under pressure and faced difficult situations due to thin patches in his career. But almost every time he made stellar comebacks and became one of the greatest smashers ever in world cricket.

The current, in a recent podcast ‘In the Zone’With India’s first individual Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra, Dravid has revealed how shutting down the match has helped him mentally.

“If I look back at my career, it’s..my energy, much of my mental energy is a real game changer in the long term in my career and in terms of performance. I used to expend a lot of energy, even when I’m not playing, thinking about my game, maybe thinking about it, worrying about it. Over time, I’ve learned that it’s not necessarily didn’t really help my sport or make me play better I needed to refresh and almost found Dravid speaking in the podcast.

“I’ve always never been like the Virus, like Virender Sehwag, who found it much easier to shutdown because of his personality outside of the game. I will never reach that level. But I’m definitely starting to recognize the red flags. I know I need to find a way to turn it off but that’s the mental side of what you need to help yourself. You realize that this is just as important to you as the extra hours in the gym and the training sessions. If you’ve done all of that but can’t mentally shut down, you won’t have enough energy to play the game. Once I started to realize that three or four years into my career, I started working towards more transformation and it helped me a lot. “