On a day when the drop-in pitches for the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup faced criticism, Rahul Dravid took a dig at the practice facilities given for the global championship. However, suddenly, the facilities in New York which will host eight of the 16 World Cup games allotted to the US, made headlines. The International Cricket Council (ICC) built a temporary stadium and on Monday Sri Lanka got out for a mere 77 against South Africa, who also struggled to chase the target.
“It’s a bit strange to be practising in a park,” the India head coach remarked as teams playing in New York have had to train at Cantiague Park, about five miles away from the ground as well. “Obviously at the World Cups you’d be in big stadiums or you’d be at cricket stadiums traditionally. But you know, we’re at a public park and practicing.”
Damian Hough, who was in-charge of the drop-in pitches, had said that the pitches to be like any other Twenty20 surface. “We are excited to see the arrival of the pitches here in New York. We’re now focused on bedding in the pitches here in New York to ensure we’re delivering an end product of the highest quality,” Hough, who is also the head curator of Adelaide Oval, said in a statement released through the ICC last month as well.
Rahul Dravid, meanwhile, opened up on the absence of buzz around New York, where India will play three league games, and he hoped the situation would improve once the matches start.
“Yeah, obviously it’s slightly different. It’s obviously exciting that it’s coming to a new country, it’s coming to a new place. (It) feels slightly different in terms of, I guess, typically the buzz that you have around these events, with cricket not being one of the major sports in this country. So you don’t feel that kind of buzz over here. But hopefully once our games start and a lot of the Indian fans do start coming in, you start seeing that similar kind of excitement. So things are certainly different from that perspective. But yeah, I think from a preparation perspective and from what we want to get out of it, I don’t think that’s changed, our preparation, our professionalism, the way we are trying to approach things. It’s pretty, pretty similar to what we would normally do,” Rahul Dravid concluded.
