India's top 5 Test captains of all time
India started playing Test cricket in 1932 when they played a one-off Test match against the Englishmen at Lords. Led by CK Nayudu, who was by far the best Indian batsman at the time, the Indian team lost their inaugural match by 158 runs.
Since then, the team has come leaps and bounds. It has been 86 years since India made its debut. In this period of 86 years, the Indian Test team has been led by as many as 33 different captains.
Amongst these 33 players, the likes of Nawab Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar, Md Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly, MS Dhoni and now Virat Kohli have had the privilege of leading the country for a good number of years.
But there also have been others like Hemu Adhikari, Pankaj Roy, Chandu Borde, Ravi Shastri and Gundappa Viswanath, who got the opportunity to lead the side on only one or two occasions.
In this article, we try and look at the top 5 Test match captains produced by India:
#5 Rahul Dravid (2004-07)
Matches as Captain: 25; Won: 8; Lost: 6; Drawn: 11
Rahul Dravid was the leader of the team during the infamous "Greg Chappell Era". He was made the Indian captain after unceremoniously removing Sourav Ganguly from the helm. Many other senior players like Sehwag, Zaheer and Harbhajan were also dropped from the team along with Ganguly at that time.
Despite the chaos, Dravid was always focussed on the job at hand. During his tenure as captain, he led India to the famous 1-0 Test series win against England in England, after a massive gap of 20 years.
Another shining light during his captaincy was a first series win in the Carribean after a gap of 36 years. People will claim that the West Indies side was past its best, but it still had the likes of Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul to contend with.
In fact, India had a good away record under Dravid as they recorded wins in Pakistan and South Africa as well.
Dravid's notable overseas success as test captain, makes him one of the top 5 test captains of India, ahead of the likes of Pataudi and Gavaskar.