Rahul Dravid's sons follow AB de Villiers' technique

Rahul Dravid’s older son Samit has already shown his cricket skills in various tournaments

Numerous budding cricketers across the world look upto Rahul Dravid as a role model but that is not the case with his sons Samit and Anvay. The former Indian cricketer has said that his sons follow South African cricketer AB de Villiers’ techniques while playing the game.

‘The Wall’ told a leading daily, “If you bat like that (the way de Villiers does) you are going to be popular. I see my sons playing, and they are always trying to play the shots AB does. Like all young players, they try to copy him but soon realize that it is not that easy to do.” De Villiers played his 100th Test match recently against India. Though South African batsmen have failed to put up a good show in the Test series so far, ABD has been an exception as usual.

Samit represented Mallya Aditi International School in this year’s U-12 Gopalan Cricket Challenge Cup at Bangalore. In a match against New Horizon Public School, the 10-year-old scored 77 runs and was involved in a 114-run partnership. He helped his team to reach a total of 210 runs in 16 overs and subsequently defeat their opponents by 114 runs.

In next match against Delhi Public School (Whitefield) the former India captain’s older son played a key role in his team’s 62 runs win. He scored 93 to help his team’s total reach 168 in 16 overs. He once again proved his batting prowess by playing a knock of 77runs against Head Start Educational Academy in the final. In this match at the St. John's Medical College grounds, Mallya Aditi International School won by 23 runs. Samit got ‘Best Batsman of the tournament’ award.

Earlier, Dravid Sr had told Wisden India that he doesn’t try to advice Samit much. “No, no, I don’t really get into trying to coach him too much. I just want him to enjoy it and just play the game, have some fun with it. He plays different sports at the moment, which is good – they (both his sons) play football and they play cricket, they swim. So that’s nice. He is too young at the moment for anything more,” the former Indian captain had said.

Jammy also believes that the 10-year-old will learn to deal with the pressure of being a famous father’s son. “Especially when you are growing up, you want to be a bit anonymous, you want to just do your thing. That might not be possible for him. But that’s the way it is and he has got to deal with it,” he had said.