Former India leg-spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan has claimed that he made an offer to work with Team India spinners to head head coach Rahul Dravid. However, as per the cricketer turned commentator, Dravid denied it out of respect as the former bowler was much senior to him.
Sivaramakrishnan, also known as Siva, revealed the same in response to a query on social media. "I offered my services to Rahul Dravid and he said that I was too senior to him, to be working under him with the spinners,” he tweeted.
The ex-India leggie represented India in as many as 9 Test matches and 16 ODIs, picking up 26 and 15 wickets in them respectively. Overall, he played 76 first-class matches and picked 154 wickets at an average of 38.49.
He made his Test debut against West Indies in 1983 while Dravid played his first Test match 13 years later in 1996 against England at the iconic Lord's Stadium.
As far as Dravid's coaching stint is concerned, he will be facing some pressure after the team's failure to lift the ICC T20 World Cup last year followed by the team's home series defeat in a long time in the recently-concluded ODI series against Australia.
While India had managed to win the series opener in Mumbai, they were blown away by the Australian pacers led by Mitchell Starc in the second ODI. In the final ODI while India did manage to play the pacers well, they did not have the answers against the spin attack of Adam Zampa and Ashton Agar, ultimately falling 21 runs short needing 270 to win.
Post the series though, India captain Rohit Sharma has underlined the need to focus on the positives and learn from the defeats.
"We can take a lot of positives from the nine ODIs since January. We need to understand where we need to improve. It's a collective failure, we can take a lot of learnings from this series. Credit to the Australians. Both the spinners applied the pressure and so did their seamers," he said after the final ODI in Chennai.