Former India captain Rahul Dravid on Wednesday said young and budding cricketers should vouch for mentors not coaches to develop themselves as a worldclass players, says a report in Deccan Chronicle.
"Young players should be looking at mentors not coaches. A lot of youngsters think that they will make themselves a world-class players through coaching academies," he said at the Club Day organised by KSCA on the occasion of Platinum Jubilee celebrations here.
Dravid said a coaching is a task-oriented job and mentoring is relationship-oriented. "Coaches focus on concrete issues of the game but mentors go beyond what coaches do. Their focus is on matters including self-confidence and self-perception," he explained.
"Coach Ramakant Achrekar never stuffed techinal aspects of the game in young Sachin Tendulkar's mind. Instead he gave him opportunities to play games almost everyday and made him bat for five hours in the nets which made him what he is today. In real sense, he was a mentor not a coach to the Mumbaikar," he said.
Meanwhile according to a report in The Times Of India, Dravid said that he has fond memories of playing club cricket. "It was an opportunity for me to play against the game's greats like Roger Binny, Sadanand Vishwanath, GR Vishwanath, Raghuram Bhat, all of whom came back to play club cricket after their India careers," said Dravid, who turns out for second division outfit Bangalore United Cricket Club.
"To play club cricket has been a great tradition of Karnataka. Playing club cricket alongside the greats was an opportunity to learn a thing or two from them," added Dravid, who also serves as president of his club.
Meanwhile a report in Asian Age quotes Srinath, the secretary of KSCA, saying: "As youngsters we would watch greats like GRV and others come and play in Mysore. That's how cricket began to inspire me. A club was like a school and if I missed even one session, I would be hard on myself," he said. "Coming from Mysore, I felt Bangalore's cricketers were stronger than us. Having said that, we played a quality cricket," the former pace ace added.
