Rahul Dravid soaks in the genius of Lionel Messi at Camp Nou

Rahul Dravid, the U-19 coach, is currently enjoying a vacation, and as part of his visit to Spain, he visited Camp Nou, where Barcelona were involved in a La Liga clash against Atletico Madrid on Sunday, 7 April.

Having played in three ICC Cricket World Cups and in the Indian Premier League in the later stages of his career, Dravid knows a thing or two about a good sporting atmosphere. He felt the atmosphere at Barcelona's ground was electric.

"It's one of the things I've always wanted to do,' Dravid said in an interview on fcbarcelona.com. "To come to Camp Nou, watch a football match and to be here, experience the atmosphere is absolutely electric.

"It's incredible, I mean to be able to watch people like (Lionel) Messi and (Luis) Suarez play live is fantastic for me and my family. So thanks to Barcelona FC for the hospitality, it's been excellent.

"We have great crowds and great atmosphere at the IPL and a lot of our Test matches as well, so cricket is the No.1 sport in India but football is catching up very quickly," said the India legend, who has 24,208 international runs across formats."

As one of few players to have scored over 10,000 runs in both Tests and one-day internationals, Dravid is widely recognised as one of the game's greats. He is able to recognise the genius in Messi too.

"I think he's an absolute genius, it's incredible what he does and to watch him live and to see ... one thing with Messi is he's fantastic with the ball but it's incredible to see how good he's without the ball – how he's able to find spaces. I don't think there's a better player than him ever."