'Not easy to captain when the team is scoring 280 on a flat wicket' - Rahul Dravid backs Riyan Parag's captaincy

Rahul Dravid spoke about Riyan Parag's role as a captain and a batter in the IPL 2025. The RR Head Coach spoke to ESPNcricinfo and felt the need to promote someone as good as Parag up the order to try and give him as many balls as possible. Dravid felt the more Parag gets to bat, the better it is for the success of the Royals.

"Look, Riyan is one of our best batters, let's be honest. And we want to give him as many balls as we possibly can. Twenty overs is a very short time, and the more balls Riyan Parag bats for us, the better it is for us as a team," said the RR Head Coach while speaking to ESPNcricinfo.

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He felt decisions would be taken by looking at the match situation in the upcoming days. "But of course, these things we'll keep looking at, we'll keep assessing, we'll keep seeing how it goes. And yeah, we know that Riyan has done well at No. 4, so it gives us an option," Dravid added.

'It didn't seem like our team was panicking' - Rahul Dravid

The former Indian Coach spoke about Riyan's captaincy in his two games so far. Dravid felt it was not easy to lead the side when the opponents are striking well on a flat surface. Rahul added that RR did not panic even when things were not going their way. He felt the first game would always be challenging for a skipper.

"It's not easy to captain when the team is scoring 280 runs [Sunrisers Hyderabad] on a flat wicket. The first game is probably a tough game to be a captain. But I think the calmness that he showed and the fact that it didn't seem like our team was panicking was good," Dravid said.

The former Indian star was sad that Sanju Samson could not lead them, but was happy to see Parah stepping into the new role. He praised Parag's decision to bring himself into the attack against KKR when the wicket had some spin in it.