Dravid: We weren’t experimenting for the sake of experimenting

“To be very honest with you, this word experimentation gets thrown around a lot without actually sometimes being thought through,” Dravid started. “It’s not that we are trying to sometimes experiment for the sake of experimenting. Sometimes there are specific reasons why you have to do certain things.”

Everyone within the room knew Dravid wasn’t achieved. In truth, he had barely warmed up.

“Just to give you an example, the No. 4 and 5 spots seem to get discussed and talked about a lot,” he continued. “It gives the impression that we don’t have clarity on who was going to be there, but to be very honest with you, I could have told you 18 or 19 months ago the top two-three candidates we were looking at for the No. 4, 5 slots. It was always going to be Shreyas [Iyer], KL [Rahul] and Rishabh [Pant] for those spots, right?

“If you look again on a number of the groups that we picked from 18 months in the past, there was little doubt in our minds. Obviously, it is unlucky that each one three of them ended up with accidents within the house of two months. What are the chances of that occuring? And I do not assume we are able to, no one can, calculate for that, particularly with the restricted variety of video games that we had in one-day cricket.”

Convinced much? Even if you were, there was more to come.

“You’re additionally specializing in a T20 World Cup, World Test Championship. You are attempting to stability all of that out. You are attempting to present sufficient recreation time to individuals. And all three of the blokes who had been type of pushing for these two spots bought injured within the house of three months and so they weren’t small accidents, proper? Serious accidents. All three of them have needed to go below the knife. So when that occurs, then you must react to that. Then you’ve got to attempt to put different individuals in these positions and see who can do it in case they don’t seem to be prepared for the World Cup or an enormous occasion.

“You can’t predict whether they’ll be 100% right or not, right? As we are seeing even now with KL, sometimes you have got to give it a week extra. So in that situation then we did try a few people. We did rotate a few people around, looked at a few people, but it’s good to know that at least two of the three seem to have got to a point where they have recovered and should be available for us.

“But in the intervening time, when individuals are not accessible, you must attempt different individuals and you must take a look at different individuals. So, I feel at this cut-off date, for us, it is actually about simply giving recreation time to individuals and guaranteeing that we give them sufficient alternatives to play within the roles that they’ll play within the match. And that is at all times been the endeavour.”

“Oh, I’m not into legacies as a coach or something like that,” he offered with a smile. “It’s thrilling to play a World Cup at house. I have to say that it should be actually thrilling for everybody, for the boys, for the followers. Yeah, there’s going be a specific amount of strain related to it, which is most welcome and which I feel all of us anticipate, however to additionally to have the ability to play in entrance of your individual house crowds, your individual followers goes be very particular for everybody. We hope we are able to have a extremely good match. I feel we’re making ready rather well, we’re increase actually properly. It is all hopefully coming collectively properly with a number of the guys getting back from harm simply on the proper time.”

The one thing Dravid strongly felt, though, was home advantage is unlikely to be a massive factor. It is not going to be “defining” in that sense. Why? The IPL, and rightly so.

“There are some actually good groups on this match, however I feel the entire thing of house benefit, particularly within the sub-continent, has decreased to a big extent over the past 10-12 years as a result of, you understand, individuals come and play right here a lot, particularly in tournaments just like the IPL, the place individuals come for 2 months and have been getting used to those circumstances.

“So it’s going to be a really close tournament, it’s going to be a tight tournament. We feel confident, we are really excited. As a coach, I’m really looking forward to it as well. But no, I mean, you don’t think about these things as legacy and stuff. That’s not really what I think about. I try to stay in the present, and try to do the job that I can now and not worry about the future.”