Former India captain and the BCCI President Sourav Ganguly on Sunday has revealed how hard it was for him to convince legendary India cricketer Rahul Dravid to take up the job of Team India’s head coach. While speaking to journalist Boria Majumdar on the show ‘Backstage with Boria’, Ganguly shared that he and the BCCI secretary Jay Shah always had Dravid’s name in their mind and it was certainly a tough task to get him to convince as well.

Ganguly said: “We had Rahul in mind for a long period of time, both me and Jay, but he wasn’t agreeing because of the time away from home [and] because doing a national team’s job is [about being] on the road for about 8-9 months in a year and he has two young children.”

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“At one stage we gave up, he was appointed as the head of NCA (National Cricket Academy, Bengaluru) to look after it and take things forward. We had done all the interviews and everything, his interview and application, and he was appointed at the NCA. But even after he was appointed, we still kept insisting,” further explained Sourav Ganguly.

Ganguly again added that from all the conversations he had with players, it became clear to Rahul Dravid that everyone wanted him as the head coach of the Indian team as well.

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“And when we spoke to the players also [about] what sort of person they want, you could clearly see that, you know, there was an inclination to Rahul so we communicated that to him. I spoke to him personally many times [saying] that, ‘I know it’s hard but give it a try for two years, and if you find it too hard then we’ll see another way’. Luckily he agreed and I don’t know what triggered the change in his mind but he agreed and I think this is the best BCCI could have done in terms of coaching once Ravi [Shastri] left,” concluded Sourav Ganguly.