Shreyas Iyer and Harshal Patel made their respective test and T20I in the ongoing series against New Zealand.
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Team India’s new Head Coach Rahul Dravid has revived the old forgotten tradition of handing over the maiden caps to debutants by former India cricketers. This is done to get the best out of the young player and keep them motivated in their pursuit to be successful at the international level.
Rahul Dravid invited former legendary Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar to hand Shreyas Iyer his maiden test cap. It was an emotional moment for Shreyas Iyer as he looked excited while receiving the cap. The 26-year-old on Thursday became the 303rd Indian test cricketer and the first since Yuvraj Singh in 2003 to debut against NZ.
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Earlier during the three match T20I series against NZ, Dravid invited Ajit Agarkar to hand over Harshal Patel his maiden cap in T20 internationals.
The tradition of debutants receiving caps from former cricketers had become a thing of past in the Indian dressing room. Ever since Mahendra Singh Dhoni took over the captaincy new entrants were receiving the caps from either the senior players in the team or from the coaches. After becoming the captain of the squad Virat Kohli continued to follow Dhoni’s footsteps and the old age tradition was abandoned in the Indian dressing room.
However, after Rahul Dravid took over as the head coach of team India, he made sure that youngsters receive caps from the legends of the game.
This tradition is followed all across the world including Australia where the debutants receive the caps from Australian legends like Mark Waugh, Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting and others.
India’s stand in captain Ajinkya Rahane won the toss and decided to bat first at the Green Park Stadium in Kanpur.
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