India are on the top of the ICC men’s T20I rankings, dominating the world stage heading into the T20 World Cup title defence at home in under 10 days. Gautam Gambhir’s men are on a roll in the format, having not tasted defeat in any series since he took over from Rahul Dravid as head coach, post June 2024.
However, India’s Test team has experienced a drastic slide in quality, with their home fortress being breached twice in under a year by New Zealand and South Africa. India are yet to win a Test series against a top-ranked nation under Gambhir, with their solitary series win coming over the West Indies at home in October 2025.
Having led India to the 2023 World Test Championship final, Dravid opened up on the challenge for India’s long-format batters who also consistently switch across for ODI and T20I commitments. Speaking at a book launch event in Bengaluru on Wednesday, Dravid opened up on the challenge of allotting preparatory time for India’s all-format batters, a concern than Test skipper Shubman Gill too had recently echoed.
“One of the things I understood as a coach, especially the guys that play all three formats, they keep moving from one format to the other,” said Dravid. “There were times when we would get to a Test match three to four days before the match, and then when we start practising for the Test match, [and] when you look back at the last time that some of these guys had actually hit a red ball, it might have been four months ago or five months ago.
“That’s become really a challenge, how do you almost find the time to be able to develop some of the skills that are hard. To play on turning tracks, or play on seaming wickets, doing that for hours and hours in a Test match is not easy. It requires skill,” the former India captain added.
Dravid recounted his days with the India side where players had ample time to switch between the Test and the ODI format before the raging advent of T20Is after 2007.
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“Now, one of the things that has become a bit tougher in red-ball cricket is a lot of our guys who play all the three formats, or who play the amount of cricket that they are playing, sometimes don’t have the time to be able to practise red-ball cricket as much.”
“I think Shubman has kind of alluded to it a little bit, just recently, because I think he’s one who experienced that. He’s one who actually played recently for us in all of the three formats so I think he would have realised how difficult it is for him to actually gear up for the Test format,” Dravid added.
India are currently sixth in the ICC World Test Championship 2025-27 cycle, with their next red-ball series marked only during the Indian off-season in August, in Sri Lanka.
