Rahul Dravid Points Out India’s ‘Major Concern’ Ahead Of World Cup, Says “West Indies Series Loss Has Shown Us…”

In ODIs and T20Is, which included bilateral series and multi-nation games, India had an 80% winning percentage during Virat Kohli’s time as white-ball captain, which included the years between 2017 and October 2021.

Rahul Dravid on India’s loss against the West Indies

The success of the Men in Blue fell off in limited-over formats after the disappointing conclusion to Kohli’s tenure at the 2021 T20 World Cup, where India suffered a surprise group-stage loss. India has won 27 of the games that have been played since then, for a winning percentage of 68%. During this time, India suffered humiliating losses in their ODI and T20I tours of Bangladesh and the West Indies, in addition to failing to advance to the T20 Asia Cup final and losing in the T20 World Cup semifinals in 2022.

What are the major concerns of the coach, Rahul Dravid?

In the wake of India’s disastrous T20I series loss to the West Indies, head coach Rahul Dravid outlined three “major concerns” for the squad as it moves forward into the Asia Cup in September and then the ODI World Cup at home.

While the criticism of the team selection had subsided after India managed to tie the series after falling behind 2-0, with most people believing they could still pull off a historic victory despite the flaws, it returned to haunt the team on Sunday when they put on yet another appalling display of batting.

Hardik Pandya on the loss against the West Indies

India started the series against the West Indies with four No. 11s. After India’s defeat in the second T20I, skipper Hardik Pandya remained unconcerned about it and urged his top order to perform, although Dravid acknowledged that their options were limited due to a lack of players in the team. He continued by saying that the West Indies series loss, in which Alzarri Joseph filled in at No. 11, demonstrated the value of having a strong batting lineup in limited-overs cricket.

Also read: WI vs IND: Hardik Pandya Takes Responsibility For Defeat Against West Indies

“I think that in terms of our squad here, probably it didn’t allow us the flexibility in some ways to be able to change the combinations a little bit,” he stated in the post-match press conference. But I believe that moving forward, we must consider those areas where we can improve. One thing we’ve been working on is adding depth to our batting. We are doing the best we can, but that is unquestionably an area we can examine—how we cannot compromise our bowling assault while making sure we have a certain level of batting depth.