Strain on India to get ICC monkey off their again? Not in any respect, says Dravid
“The hype not being there might be a good thing.”
With that remark, India head coach Rahul Dravid ended his media convention on Monday. The relative absence of the hype, Dravid felt, may very well be a bonus for India as they get able to contest their second World Test Championship remaining, beginning on Wednesday, in opposition to Australia.
Rohit Sharma’s India have been in England for near every week. They slipped in quietly, in batches, to the prepare within the quieter, and picturesque, environs in Arundel. Both groups arrived in London over the weekend, however the buzz was largely in regards to the FA Cup remaining, the prepare strikes and a bit about England Bazballing Ireland at Lord’s.
The media briefings with the Australian contingent over the previous few days have been dominated by Ashes discuss, and, you would not be far off the mark in the event you felt the WTC remaining was extra of a warm-up, a stepping stone for the marquee collection of the English summer time.
The Ashes has been a storied cricketing rivalry and the thrill is palpable. But India-Australia has grown into probably the greatest cricketing contests within the final decade. Australia captain Pat Cummins acknowledged that at an ICC occasion on Sunday, saying the one staff that had “really troubled” Australia had been India, who’ve received the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on successive away excursions.
Still, with hotter temperatures forecast for the match, the longer boundaries on the Oval which additionally has true bounce, has made pundits like Ricky Ponting and Wasim Akram imagine Cummins’ staff has a slight edge.
India, although, are unperturbed.
“Look, whatever will happen will happen in those five days,” Dravid mentioned. “Anything that happens before or after doesn’t really make a difference. Who is the favourite, who isn’t, when two good teams with good players play, whichever team performs well over the five days, will win. I have full hope that if we play good cricket, and, we have the ability, we have the players that we can pick 20 wickets, we can score runs, I have full hope that we can win this. The hype not being there might be a good thing.”
Dravid additionally mentioned India weren’t going into the match with the bags of getting not received a world title since MS Dhoni’s staff lifted the 2013 Champions Trophy, which was additionally in England. Under the management of Rohit and Dravid, India have featured in two T20 World Cups, with their greatest end being the semis within the 2022 version in Australia.
“No, not at all,” Dravid responded as to whether India had been feeling any stress from such expectations. “I mean, we don’t feel any pressure in terms of trying to win an ICC trophy. Of course, it would be nice to do it. It’s certainly nice to be able to win an ICC tournament. But also in the context of things, you look at this and you see this is the culmination of two years of work, it’s a culmination of a lot of success that gets you here. So there’s a lot of positives to take from that to see where you stand on the table, winning series in Australia, drawing series here, being very competitive everywhere that this team has played in the world over the last five or six years.
“Those are issues that may by no means change simply because you’ve got or you do not have an ICC trophy. That’s actually the larger image. But, in fact, it is good to have the ability to carry any recreation of cricket you wish to win. This occurs to be like a World Test Championship remaining and it might be good to get them on the appropriate aspect of the end result.”
Dravid also felt it would be stretching the point by attaching the significance of an Indian win in the WTC final to the long-term health of Test cricket, just like India’s World Cup wins in 1983 and 2007 had done for the exponential growth of the white-ball game.
“I do not assume you’ll be able to examine the 2. That was a very long time in the past they usually (ODIs and T20s) nonetheless are the brand new codecs of the sport. Test cricket has been round a extremely very long time and I’m undecided one match goes to rework issues or change issues drastically, regardless of whichever manner it goes. Test cricket faces distinctive challenges, it is a improbable recreation which faces some challenges, which isn’t essentially going to vary (by) the results of one recreation.”