Team India may not have won an ICC trophy for a long time now, but head coach Rahul Dravid has said that the side is not feeling any pressure about that. Saying that winning an ICC tournament would be nice, he claimed that it’s also important to look at the larger picture as well. Notably, India last won an ICC event in 2013 when an MS Dhoni-led team lifted the Champions Trophy. They reached the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy as well as the 2021 World Test Championship (WTC) but finished as runners-up as well.
At a press conference on Monday, Dravid said: “No, not at all. 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.
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He continued: “Those are things that will never change just because you have or you don’t have an ICC trophy. That’s really the bigger picture. But, of course, it’s nice to be able to lift any game of cricket you want to win. This happens to be like a World Test Championship final and it would be nice to get them on the right side of the result.”
However, many have termed Australia as favourites to win the WTC final, because the conditions in England are expected to suit them better. But, Rahul Dravid had a philosophical take on it and stuck to the ‘the better team will win’ theory as well.
“Look, whatever will happen will happen in those five days. 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,” he further shared.
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However, India and Australia locked horns in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India earlier this year, with the hosts winning the series by a 2-1 margin as well. The head coach also said that it would be unfair to compare the WTC performance with the iconic limited-overs wins as well.
“I don’t think you can compare the two. That was a long time ago and they (ODIs and T20s) still are the new formats of the game. Test cricket has been around a really long time and I’m not sure one match is going to transform things or change things drastically, irrespective of whichever way it goes. Test cricket faces unique challenges, it’s a fantastic game which faces some challenges, which is not necessarily going to change (by) the result of one game,” Rahul Dravid concluded.
