'An opportunity missed' – Rahul Dravid on India's Test series loss in England

Dravid pointed out that conditions in England were tough for batting, but added that given how the Indian bowlers performed, Virat Kohli's men would see it as an opportunity lost to secure a significant win.

"Firstly, the point I would like to make is that there were pretty tough conditions (in England)," he told CricketNext. "I know it is very easy to be critical about people, but those were not easy batting conditions in England this time.

"Other than Virat Kohli, who was head and shoulders above everyone else, both teams found it difficult. Having said that, I think that the team will feel that this was an opportunity missed because of how well the bowlers were bowling."

The Indian troika of Ishant Sharma (18 wickets), Mohammed Shami (16 wickets) and Jasprit Bumrah (14 wickets) finished in the top five of the wickets chart. Dravid said this bowling was "as good as he had ever seen before" and "the stuff of dreams."

"So, I think they will look back and feel that if we had batted a bit better in some key situations or maybe push through and scored a few more runs, we could have won this series. It will seem for the boys like – and even for us who are involved in India cricket in some ways – we will look at this slightly as an opportunity missed."

One of the reasons given for India's poor show with the bat in Tests, especially in overseas conditions, is how much white-ball cricket is played throughout the year. Dravid agreed that more white-ball cricket had led to batsmen playing more attacking shots, which isn't ideal for Test match batting.

"Just the amount of white-ball cricket that the boys are practising, maybe they are not practising as much red-ball cricket as they probably were in the past," he said. "And that is bound to have some level of impact when conditions get a bit more difficult, get a bit more challenging, whether it is swing or seam or spin or it could be anything.

"For example, we went to England on the A tour and some of the boys had not practised with a red ball for seven months, because when the Ranji Trophy finished in December the teams that got knocked out early, they had no chance because there was a domestic one-day competition, there was a [T20 competition] followed by the IPL [Indian Premier League] ... Now that is a long time."

And yet, there are players graduating from the A level to the senior side, in all formats of the game, and two such men who made a late impact in the series were Rishabh Pant and Hanuma Vihari.

While Pant scored his maiden Test century in the second innings of the fifth Test at The Oval, Vihari got a half-century in the first innings of the same match. Although these performances couldn't win India the game, their performances were of note, and Dravid said that as a fan of Indian cricket, they made him happy.

"It does [make me happy] and it would even do when I was not a coach," he said. "You see a young kid come through and perform the way they do, Rishabh does what he does or a Vihari did what he did, or young Khaleel Ahmed the other night [in the Asia Cup] – to see some of them come through and the joy it brings to their faces ... it gladdens your heart," he added.

"I might be a coach, but I am a fan in that sense of the word as well. When you see a young Indian talent come through, you feel good about it."