We Are Very Confident About What We’ve Been Doing: Rahul Dravid

Guwahati: Team India will take on South Africa in the second T20I today at the Barsapara Cricket Stadium in Guwahati. India leads the three-match series 1-0.

Ahead of the game, India’s Head Coach Rahul Dravid addressed a press conference.

With the T20 World Cup round the corner, Dravid assured that the communication within the team has been good despite the constant shuffling in the playing XI.

“I think it’s a little unrealistic to expect us to keep playing the same XI over and over again. Some of the changes or experiments that people like to call them are sometimes forced upon you. If Bumrah doesn’t play the last game, it’s not because we are experimenting. It’s because he gets injured. The five-match series against South Africa in June, we played exactly the same XI in all five matches. People were saying, ‘why don’t they change the XI?’….so I think we can’t win either way.

“Whatever we do, people are going to say that. But I think in the group and in the team, we are very confident and sure about what we’ve been doing. Sometimes it doesn’t seem very apparent from the outside but there are a lot of things that people outside can’t know. What niggles players are having…how we need to manage the players. If you notice, we were playing a Test match and at the same time, we were playing a series in Ireland. So, there are many things that go into this,” he added.

In the post-match presentation of the first T20I, South Africa’s captain, Temba Bavuma said, “As a batting unit we failed to apply ourselves in those conditions. We didn’t expect the pitch to play this way. Yes, we expected it to be spicy but normally you will be able to hit through the line in this part of the world. Seamers needed runs behind them to defend. They tried their best and supported by spinners as well. I thought we fought well late with the bat. That’s a positive.”

Squads
India: KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma(c), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant(w), Dinesh Karthik, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Harshal Patel, Deepak Chahar, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal, Umesh Yadav, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj, Shahbaz Ahmed

South Africa: Quinton de Kock(w), Temba Bavuma(c), Rilee Rossouw, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Tristan Stubbs, Wayne Parnell, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Tabraiz Shamsi, Heinrich Klaasen, Reeza Hendricks, Dwaine Pretorius, Lungi Ngidi