Ravichandran Ashwin, who played a key role in India’s victory with his all-round performance in the first Test match against Bangladesh, credited T Dilip for improving the team’s slip fielding and said that the fielding coach has worked very hard. Dilip became the fielding coach of the Indian team in place of R Sridhar when Rahul Dravid was the head coach. The team management decided to retain him even after Gautam Gambhir became the head coach. Ashwin said that he had searched Dilip Sir’s name on the Internet.
Dilip did some new experiments in the fielding of the team which were quite successful. He started the tradition of giving the ‘best fielder’ award in the team after the defeat, which has boosted the morale of the players a lot. When Ashwin, who scored 113 runs in the first innings of the match and took six wickets in the second innings, was asked about fielding in the press conference, he said, “If you want to talk about fielding, then where should we start? First of all, let’s talk about Dilip Sir. When we searched his name on the internet, ‘Internet celebrity’ was coming with his name.
He said, “However, his identity is not this (famous on the internet). He is our ‘celebrity’ fielding coach. Super star.” Ashwin said, “A year or two ago it was challenging for us to catch catches in the slip area but Jaiswal has improved a lot in this matter. Dilip has worked hard with him. Jaiswal has done very well in this matter since the series against South Africa.”
He said, “He is excellent at fielding in the slips as well as close to the batsman. Lokesh Rahul is a great option for the second slip but now Jaiswal has taken his place. According to me, both of them have worked very hard.”