Former India head coach Rahul Dravid has suggested that the country’s multi-format batters no longer have the breathing space to polish red-ball skills, a gap he feels is showing up in recent Test results. India went 12 years without losing a home series; they have now dropped two of the last three, 3-0 to New Zealand in 2024 and 2-0 to South Africa late in 2025.
“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,” Dravid said in Bengaluru at the launch of The Rise of the Hitman: The Rohit Sharma Story. “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.”
Current Test captain Shubman Gill has said much the same. He recently asked the BCCI for more lead-in time before a Test tour, admitting the side is squeezed by limited-overs commitments and tight travel windows.
“In my generation, when there were only two formats in the game, and there wasn’t really the idea of franchise cricket, there were a lot of times where I would have a whole month of practicing for a Test series and I would be able to play with the red ball, and I would be able to develop my skills,” Dravid continued. “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.”
India remain dominant in T20Is—3-0 up on New Zealand with two to play and tipped to retain the T20 World Cup—but Dravid believes that very success underlines the imbalance in practice time.
“You look at the hitting part, and the way people are hitting today in white-ball cricket, it’s because they are able to practise it a lot more,” he pointed out. “A lot of these boys who spend two-and-a-half months in the IPL, all they are doing is practising how many sixes they can hit, so they are getting much better at it.”
The schedule for the next World Test Championship cycle is still being finalised. Whether administrators can free up even a fortnight for a proper red-ball camp remains to be seen, but the message from both the former coach and his captain is plain enough: without extra preparation, India’s Test batting could stay undercooked.
