Team India’s head coach Rahul Dravid ruined the lack of flexibility in the Indian batting lineup in the West Indies series after the Indian team’s 3-2 series loss to the Men in Maroon on Sunday. Hardik Pandya-led side was completely outplayed in the final and deciding game of the series to lose the series against West Indies after 17 long years.
With the five-match series being equally poised 2-2, India opted to bat first on the final game of the deciding game, Indian openers Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal failed to give the team a good start after a record partnership in the 4th T20 game, with Suryakumar Yadav taking up the responsibility to help the Indian side a decent total of 165-9 at the end of the 20 overs.
With 166 runs to win the series against the mighty Indian team, West Indies batters showed a lot of intent to win the game, as Brandon King and Nicholas Pooran went all guns blazing against the Indian bowlers to chase down the target within 18 overs to register memorable win series against India in Florida.
Speaking in the post-match press conference, Rahul Dravid admitted that the Indian squad for the West Indies series didn’t have the flexibility to change the team combinations and said that the team will be looking at certain areas where they can improve and also added that they will try to address their batting depth going into the next T20 series.
“I think 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.”
“But I think going forward, we’ve got to look at certain areas in which we can get better. Finding depth in our batting has been an area we are trying to address. We are trying to do the best we possibly can but that’s certainly an area we can look at, how we cannot weaken our bowling attack but ensure we have a certain amount of depth in batting,” Rahul Dravid said.
India has opted to rest the Indian senior players Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Ravindra Jadeja for the T20 series against the West Indies as they want the experienced players to be fully fit for the Asia Cup 2023 and ODI World Cup 2023.
This Series Has Shown Us And We Need To Build On That Depth – Rahul Dravid
Rahul Dravid said that the Indian team lacks some proper batters in the lower-down order, who can score some important runs for the team, and highlighted the fact the West Indies batting depth in the T20 cricket with Alzarri Joseph batting at No.11 for the team and asserted that the team needs to build depth in batting going forward.
“As these games are going on, and scores are becoming bigger and bigger if you look at West Indies, they had Alzarri Joseph coming in at No. 11 and he can hit a mean ball. So you have sides that have that depth. We have some challenges on that front and we need to work on that. It’s certainly something that this series has shown us and we need to build on that depth,” Rahul Dravid added.
India will travel to Ireland for the three-match T20 series under the leadership of Jasprit Bumrah and they will turn things around in the forthcoming series. The T20 series will begin on August 18, while the other two matches will be played on August 20 and 23, respectively. All three T20 matches will be played in Malahide.