‘Looked like he was kicked out’ – Former IPL star on Rahul Dravid’s exit as RR coach | CricTracker

Rahul Dravid recently stepped down as Rajasthan Royals (RR) head coach, sparking several questions about the reasons behind his departure. Former South African skipper AB de Villiers has shared his perspective on the development.

The RR franchise, in an official statement, revealed that Dravid had been offered a broader role as part of a structural review but chose not to accept it. However, de Villiers hinted that the exit might not have been entirely voluntary, suggesting that Dravid was effectively pushed out of the setup.

“Sometimes you see it in the Premier League as well, the football league, where the managers and the coaches are always under huge pressure to perform and to bring trophies home. And once they don’t, they start hearing from the owners and whoever makes the decisions for the various franchises, so we don’t know the facts really. It sounds to me like the fact that he turned down that other role, sort of that he was kicked out, which is never ideal,” said de Villiers on his YouTube channel.

“But maybe Rajasthan has different ideas for the upcoming season. Maybe they want to shake things up a bit and move forward with that. I don’t think they had the greatest auction last time, as they let go of some incredible players, the likes of Jos Buttler, to name but a few, which I thought was a mistake. That sometimes is a good thing, but not overly aggressive for you. You can let one or two go, but they. They let a huge bulk of their team go at once, I think, a gradual sort of decline,” he added.

In the past, Dravid captained the Rajasthan Royals between 2012 and 2013 before later taking up a mentor’s role with the franchise. The 2008 champions endured a difficult campaign in IPL 2025, finishing ninth on the points table with only four wins. Their struggles were compounded by the injury to skipper Sanju Samson, which forced the team to hand over the captaincy duties to Riyan Parag.

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