Rahul Dravid

Former India head coach Ravi Shastri hailed his successor and former batter Rahul Dravid, saying that he is the best person to take over from him as the head coach of the national side. After Shastri's reign as the head coach ended after Men's T20 World Cup last year, Dravid succeeded him for the job in November 2021 and is currently with the side in the ongoing Edgbaston Test.

The 33-year-old Kohli has been in something of a rut. He has gone more than 100 innings in all forms of cricket including IPL without scoring a hundred since hitting 136 in Kolkata against Bangladesh in November 2019. He has often got starts but he hasn't been able to convert them into big scores. The former Indian skipper has even reached fifty several times since that innings in Kolkata but hasn't managed to hit his 71st international century yet.

"It's been challenging as well, we have got six captains in the last eight months, which actually wasn't the plan when I started, but it's the nature of the number of games we are playing, it's the nature of Covid, so I have had to work with quite a few people, it has been great fun. A lot of other guys have got an opportunity to lead, we have got opportunities to create more leaders in the group," Dravid told Star Sports.

Started off well with the ball, taking three wickets in the powerplay, India lost the momentum when a steady 64-run partnership off 41 balls between Klassen and captain Temba Bavuma stabilised the innings for South Africa. After the departure of Bavuma in the second ball of the 13th over, Klassen took over and guided South Africa to a comprehensive win, taking a 2-0 lead in the series.

"It's not difficult at all. (KL) Rahul has captained before. We are clear on a lot of things. Rohit (Sharma) is our all format player. It would be unrealistic to expect everyone to be available all the time. There are times where we've to rest our big players," said Dravid in a press conference ahead of India's second practice session on Tuesday.

Malik, 22, bowls with sheer pace and consistently clocks speeds above 150kph and was used as a middle-overs enforcer by Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2022, picking 19 wickets in that phase, out of his haul of 22 wickets in the tournament. Dravid had been keenly watching Malik in India's first practice session on Monday.

India head coach Rahul Dravid led the felicitation of senior batter Virat Kohli on reaching the landmark of 100 Tests ahead of the first Test against Sri Lanka at the IS Bindra PCA Stadium on Friday. Kohli has become the 12th Indian and 71st cricketer overall to achieve the landmark.

"I think we need a certain level of flexibility in T20s, that again has been communicated to a lot of the players. There has been conversation around the fact that we need to be flexible, we can't be predictable. We need to sometimes have the left-right combinations," said Dravid in the virtual press conference after India completed a 3-0 sweep of the West Indies on Sunday.

Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Wriddhiman Saha has been in the centre of two different controversies over the past weekend. On epretains to his exclusion from the test side and the second pertains to a shocking revelation by Saha in which he was allegedly being harassed by a “respected journalist” for an interview. These two revelations are being debated by Indian cricket fans on public forums. Here’s all you need to know:

Fighting fifties by Virat Kohli (65), Shikhar Dhawan (61), and Deepak Chahar (54) went in vain as South Africa completed a hat-trick of wins with a four-run victory in the thrilling third and final ODI to seal a 3-0 series whitewash against India in Cape Town on Sunday. The head coach also admitted that the side missed the likes of Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, who give much-needed all-round options to the side.