Rahul Dravid, the head of NCA, opened up about various things to ESPN CricInfo in their latest interview.
The former Indian captain was asked about the mental health issues faced by the cricketers.
“It is a big challenge. This is a tough game. There is so much competition, a lot of pressure, and kids are playing all year round now. It is a game in which you do sometimes spend a lot of time waiting around, having a lot of time to think.
So, you really need to look after yourself on and off the field and look after stuff like mental health. That’s again something that, as much as we talk to these boys about, it’s really important to maintain a certain level of balance in everything you do. Be able to find that balance between not getting too excited when you succeed and not getting too disappointed when you fail. I just think being able to lead a slightly balanced life potentially helps.
We are also putting a few things in place at the NCA wherein we want to be able to give people an opportunity to talk about these things and address some of these things, and have people that they can speak to. So, yes, there has been some work on that as well, wherein eventually, we’ll get to a point where hopefully we should have professionals on board. I think sometimes some of these things need to be handled by professionals.
I don’t think some of the coaches, or some of us, have the ability to deal with some of the issues. Some things we might be able to, but there may be some things where we might need to look at professional help. It’s one of the things we are definitely keen on doing at the NCA: giving some of these boys access to some level of professional help if they do require it”, Dravid said.
Mental health is currently a major problem among cricketers. One thing is that now the cricketers are aware of what are they going through and it is healthy to speak out, it is high time that most of the cricketing academy takes it seriously to appoint a professional with whom the cricketers can open up.
