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Mayank Agarwal indebted to Dravid and Gavaskar's advice

 Mayank Agarwal was named Man of the Series

Mayank Agarwal the man of the series during the recent Tri series tournament has shown his true potential. Amassing 409 runs in five innings, he showed his hunger to play more matches and a chance to even make it to the senior team.

It was a turnaround of sorts for the young Karnataka batsman who was dropped from the Karnataka Ranji team, before the start of the tournament. Rahul Dravid the India A coach thinks the Ranji snub worked wonders for Agarwal and was a wake up call, as he brought out his A-game during the tri-series.

 Mayank agreed with The Wall, talking to PTI he said, "Yes, you can say it is a bit of a turnaround. I have got to understand my game a lot better in the last six to eight months. I think the transition started in September last year and slowly I got to understand my game better and work on my game plan."

The highlight of his brilliant series was the back to back hundreds he scored against South Africa A. He was lucky to have had the guidance of Rahul Dravid and he constantly picked his brain to get inputs from him to improve his game and make it better, but he also says a brief talk with Sunil Gavaskar also helped his batting and words of encouragement from both the stalwarts gave him the much-needed confidence.  

"I was lucky enough to spend some time with Gavaskar sir. It was after our first league game against South Africa. He told me he always looked to bat out a session. There were a lot of questions asked. Things like how to face the fast bowlers across formats. It meant a great deal as he is one of the best we have had," said Agarwal recalling his interaction with the former captain.  

Next up, Agarwal is thinking improving his form in the four-day format where he has had a dismal past 12 months.  "Dravid sir told me that preparation before the game is very important and if you do that well, consistency will follow. Every time after the innings, I could ask him anything about batting. That was great.”

"Overall, the biggest takeaway was his (Dravid's) insight on preparation. He also helped with my onside play and how to go about with on-drives," Agarwal said.

Mayank has also made the Ranji recall a certainty, after a brilliant show, asked about the switch to a different format he said,  "In the longer format, the basics will remain the same. I will see what shots I can play on a given surface. I don't need to be playing too many shots in the longer format as there is time, so I will just look to play session after session.”

India A won the final against Australia A, with a brilliant performance from Gurkeerat Mann.  

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