India head coach Rahul Dravid is pleased with the way the team performed in the Tests and ODIs during the West Indies tour but was left disappointed with the result of the T20I series which they lost 2-3. Dravid says it has shown them where they lack and what needs to be done to address the issue.
The T20 World Cup will be played in the Caribbean Islands and USA next year and hence, there’s plenty of time for the Indian team to start finding solutions.
Dravid has identified lack in batting depth as a challenge in T20Is.
“Our one-day team is really different to the squad we have here (for T20Is). In terms of squad we had here, it didn’t allow us the flexibility to be able to change the combinations. But going forward, we have to look at certain areas in which to get better – finding depth in the batting is an area we are trying to address,” Dravid told reporters after India lose the fifth T20I on Sunday.
Dravid though added building more depth in batting won’t come at the cost of their bowling though.
“We do not want to weaken our bowling attack but ensure that we have certain amount of depth in batting that goes a little bit deeper. Scores are getting bigger. West Indies had Alzarri (Joseph) at 11 who can hit as well. We have some challenges on that front, we need to work on that. This series has certainly shown that” he said.
Dravid says the one-day series taught them some good lessons ahead of a couple of major tournaments.
“Very pleased with the Test match, little disappointed we could force result in the 2nd Test because of weather so lost a few points there. But we played well to get that result. The one-dayers were good as well. With the Asia Cup and World Cup coming up, big one-day tournaments, goals of that tournament were slightly different. We learnt some good lessons from the one-day series,” he said.
While admitting that mistakes have been made during the T20I series, Dravid defended his team saying the players are young and will get better.
“We just couldn’t close out the series today. Made a few mistakes along the way. We made a few mistakes in the first couple of games and today didn’t bat as well as we could have. But this can happen, this is a young, developing team. There are going to be ups and down. Of course, we are disappointed, would have loved to get the right result. Lot of learnings for us,” said the former India captain.
This was India’s first ever bilateral T20I series defeat since 2021 when they lost to Sri Lanka. The result may have not been in their favour but India certainly some positives to take from the series including how debutants including Mukesh Kumar, Tilak Varma and Yashasvi Jaiswal fared.
“Didn’t tick the fact that we wanted to win the series. We wanted to try out the youngsters in this series, gave a few debuts, tried out people in different combinations. So, from that perspective, we got some positives, some players and things we can certainly look forward to in the future,” Dravid said.
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