The batting great hailed Rahul Dravid as the great 'team man'.
Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar heaped praise on former India head coach Rahul Dravid for equally sharing the BCCI prize money for their 2024 T20 World Cup triumph with his coaching staff.
Gavaskar also posed a question to current coach Gautam Gambhir, who had only recently won the Champions Trophy 2025 in Dubai. He asked whether Gambhir would ‘Do a Dravid?’ with the INR 58 crore reward BCCI had announced.
For winning India’s second T20 crown after a gap of 17 years in the Caribbean, the BCCI had announced a cash prize of INR 125 crore for all members of the Indian team coached by Rahul Dravid and captained by Rohit Sharma.
That included players who didn’t get a game in the World Cup, four reserve players, three assistant coaches, members of the selection committee, backroom staff that included three physiotherapists, three throwdown specialists, two masseurs, and a strength and conditioning coach.
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While the breakdown of the reward to each member of the unit was never officially announced, Gavaskar revealed that Dravid refused to accept a sum higher than his backroom staff and took home an equal share.
“After the ICC T20 World Cup win and the Board announcement of prize money, the then-coach Rahul Dravid, ever the team man, refused to accept more than his fellow members of the coaching staff and, in fact, shared it equally with his colleagues,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar.
To depict the financial progress BCCI made since the 1983 ODI World Cup win and now, Gavaskar narrated how the then captain Kapil Dev had to try everything to convince the then BCCI president NKP Salve to announce a cash prize of INR 1 lakh to each member of the team, but got INR 25,000 each instead.
Gavaskar then went to pose the question to current coach Gautam Gambhir, who himself had won two World Cups as a player, if he would follow the example set by his predecessor Dravid by splitting the Champions Trophy prize money equally with his staff.
“It’s been a fortnight since the BCCI announced the Champions Trophy rewards, but we haven’t heard anything from the current coach on whether he will also do a Dravid. Or is it that Dravid, in this instance, is not a good role model?” Gavaskar said.
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