Beleaguered India captain Sourav Ganguly got a much-needed confidence booster from his deputy, Rahul Dravid, who said the stylish left-hander would come out of his lean patch soon.
"It is true that he has not been getting runs of late. But I'm sure that he will come back into runs sooner than later," Dravid said.
He said it is only natural for every player to lose his form at one point or the other and the challenge is to help those out of form.
"Every player has a role to play, a job to do. At different times different players are not in form. The challenge for the team is to carry along the people who are not in form," Dravid told reporters on the eve of the second One-Day International against Pakistan in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday.
Ganguly had a poor run with the bat in the just-concluded Test series, where he totalled a paltry 48 at a meagre average of 9.6 before getting clean bowled off the first ball in the opening one-dayer in Kochi.
Statistics reveal that Ganguly's form was equally dismal in his last seven ODIs where he totalled only 147 at an average of 21. His record in the last five limited-over matches opposite Pakistan was marginally better - an aggregate of 112 at 22.4 runs per innings.
But Dravid said the skipper's repeated failures haven't increased the pressure on the team.
"I don't think there is increased pressure on the team on account of this," he said.
Ganguly, who has been drawing flak and facing a barrage of questions from the media regularly for his run-less streak, skipped the customary match-eve press conference and sent Dravid instead.
Dravid, however, made light a query on Ganguly's absence, saying, "He is practising and we thought we will show you a different face."
