Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India] : While assessing his team’s performance in the ongoing ICC World Cup 2023, India head coach Rahul Dravid outlined a very particular task that the Men in Blue have set for themselves.
India has dominated the 2023 World Cup, winning all nine of their group-stage games and being the only undefeated team in the tournament. Men in Blue will face-off against New Zealand at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai in the first semifinal of the World Cup on Wednesday.
With the exception of a couple of small hitches, such as being 2/3 against Australia in Chennai and being reduced to 229/9 against England in Lucknow, India has been a formidable force in the event.
Dravid cited a specific mission assigned to the team as a motivating factor in these victories.
“We set ourselves a little bit of a challenge ahead of the World Cup. Thousands of fans in nine different cities, and the passion of our fans. We really wanted to put our best foot forward and give a really good display. And I think the boys have responded and done really well,” Dravid told Star Sports as quoted by ICC.
During the World Cup, India was the only team to play in nine different venues, one for each of their group games. Dravid was overjoyed with their most recent performance, a crushing victory over the Netherlands in Bengaluru.
Rahul Dravid reflected on India’s successful journey across nine cities and said, “We had six days off, so it was really nice to get a game before the semi-finals. Just to get those cobwebs out, it was good we got what we needed. Five of our batsmen getting in there, getting their starts. A couple of boys going on and getting some really good hundreds.”
He also believed that the ball experiments benefited the team.
“And then with the ball as well, just gave us an opportunity after we got that big score to be able to mix and match a little bit and look at some of the other options that hopefully we don’t need. But we may need,” said the India coach.
Dravid was full of confidence in his batting lineup, and he was especially happy with the performance of his middle-order
“I think our middle-order has been fantastic. Obviously, the top-order gets to bat all the time and has been scoring a lot of runs for us. When you look at the leaderboard on the numbers, you’ll see the Kohlis and the Sharmas, and rightly so. They’ve been batting fantastically and batting really well. But the middle-order is critical because you’re always playing in pressure situations,” he added.
“They don’t always play every single game, sometimes they get to bat after 30 overs when the ball is soft, when the ball is older. The wicket is getting slower as well, and for them to bat the way they are, whether it is Shreyas [Iyer], whether it is KL [Rahul], you know even Jaddu [Ravindra Jadeja] or even Surya [Suryakumar Yadav] in the knock he got. It just gives us the confidence that we’ve got that experience, we’ve got the ability and we’ve also got them in form and playing really well getting into the semi-finals,” Dravid said.