The Indian Head Coach, Rahul Dravid, defends the Indian team and says that two losses do not make them a terrible team.
Defending champions, Team India, were eliminated from the Asia Cup after losing both their super four group matches. India lost to Pakistan and Sri Lanka while defending a target of more than 170. India was unable to find a balanced playing XI. They largely missed the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Harshal Patel, and Ravindra Jadeja, who were ruled out due to injuries. The team played well but fell short by small margins. They lost both their matches in the last over. The men in blue were criticized heavily after their disappointing performance. However, their head coach has come to their rescue.
Dravid backs the Indian team
Indian head coach and former cricketer, Dravid was engaged in an interview with Sanjay Manjrekar before the commencement of India versus Afghanistan. Replying to a question on India’s performance, Dravid said that the format of T20 is a game of the smallest margins. Any team can win on any given day with the smallest of margins. He said,
“Irrespective of whether we would have won those games, you got to keep things in perspective. In T20s, the margins are so small. It’s not that because we won that tight game against Pakistan, everything becomes perfect. We lost a couple of games, which had gone down on a wicket that wasn’t easy to defend”
He further added that the team tries not to overthink these things. The coach also added that two losses do not make them a bad team and that they have been playing consistently good cricket for the past 8–9 months. He added,
“We’ve taken the games down to the last ball. I’m not using that as an excuse, I still think we should have gotten over the line in at least one of those games. But we would have to still learn. We haven’t been perfect, just because we lost a couple of games, it doesn’t mean we are a terrible team. We have been playing good cricket over the past 8-9 months”
Teams’ balance went for a toss owing to injuries
He admitted that frequent injuries have not helped the team. They lost the balance within a set team, which was a major setback in a tournament this big.
“A couple of injuries and illnesses means your balance the team goes whack. In tournaments such as these, the margins become very small. The whole point is not to overreact, we can tend to go to extremes at some time. The kind of environment we want to create is very balanced”
It was a tournament to forget for India. They will now match up with Australia, followed by South Africa, before they head into the T20 World Cup in October.
