T Dilip did not come up with the fielding medal alone. The idea started as something broader, covering all three departments. It was Rohit Sharma who told him to focus on fielding only.
In an interview with RevSportz, Dilip revealed for the first time how the medal took shape during the 2023 Asia Cup. He had pitched the concept to Rohit over breakfast.
“It was during the Asia Cup that the idea first came to me, and I remember taking it to captain Rohit Sharma over breakfast. I had originally envisaged medals for all departments, batting, bowling and fielding, and proposed the idea to Rohit. It was Rohit who suggested that batting and bowling always get recognised with the Player of the Match award, so it was important that we do something for fielding. That’s when we zeroed in on the fielding medal.”
T Dilip, RevSportz interview, August 18, 2026
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Rohit’s logic was simple. Batting and bowling already have individual recognition built into cricket’s reward system. Fielding has nothing. No milestone, no match award, no formal acknowledgment. That gap is what made the medal necessary.
Dilip then took the refined idea to head coach Rahul Dravid. Dravid backed it immediately. Neither of them expected it to grow the way it did, and Dilip credited the BCCI media team for documenting the ceremonies and giving them visibility.
The first time the medal was presented remains Dilip’s most significant memory from his tenure. He had no guarantee it would land with the players. It did.
What the Medal Changed in the Dressing Room
The fielding medal did not reward spectacular catches. It rewarded cumulative fielding impact across an entire match. That distinction mattered.
Dilip explained in a JioStar interview that the medal created competition among all 11 fielders, not just those in catching positions. Players in non-traditional spots started paying attention to small contributions because any effort could earn the award. They celebrated each other’s work in the field. Fielding, for the first time, had its own economy of recognition inside the Indian dressing room.
The ceremonies went viral during the 2023 World Cup at home. BCCI videos of Dilip presenting the medal with guest announcers, spider-cam deliveries, and creative setups became a defining feature of India’s campaign.
Dilip’s five-year tenure with India coincided with one of the team’s most successful stretches. He was part of two T20 World Cup wins in 2024 and 2026, the 2025 Champions Trophy, and two Asia Cup titles.
His best moment, he said on JioStar, was not a trophy but a silence. After the 2024 T20 World Cup win in Barbados, the dressing room went quiet for a few seconds before the celebrations started. In that silence, Dilip said he could feel the weight of four years of work the players had put in.
The BCCI did not renew Dilip’s contract after India’s white-ball tour of England in mid-2026. Former Assam cricketer Subhadeep Ghosh replaced him as fielding coach ahead of the Sri Lanka Test series.
On August 3, Dilip posted a farewell on Instagram. Rohit Sharma responded with his own tribute.
“You’re a legend Dilip garu. You created magic within the group and a behind the scenes workhorse. Best wishes ahead.”
Rohit Sharma, Instagram story, August 3, 2026
Dilip had first joined the setup under Dravid in November 2021. He was the only coaching staff member retained when Gautam Gambhir took over as head coach. He returned for a second stint on a one-year contract for India’s 2025 England Test tour before his tenure ended for good.
Insider Read
Fielding is the only discipline in cricket with no built-in individual recognition. A batter scores a hundred and gets a standing ovation. A bowler takes five wickets and the scorecard carries his name permanently. A fielder who saves 20 runs across a Test match, who dives at backward point six times, who covers more ground than anyone else on the park, gets nothing.
That structural gap is what Rohit identified over breakfast. He did not just narrow Dilip’s idea. He gave it a reason to exist. A medal for batting or bowling would have been redundant, a copy of what already existed. A medal exclusively for fielding filled a hole that cricket has ignored for over a century. That is why it worked. That is why players fought for it.
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