Team India head coach Rahul Dravid has admitted that lack of depth in the batting department is a major area of concern for India in the limited-overs series. While talking about the West Indies having Alzarri Joseph batting at No. 11 in their line-up, he shared that India will need to show significant improvement there. However, with this defeat, India lost to Windies in a bilateral T20I series for the first time since 2017.
Speaking at a press conference following India’s loss, Dravid said, “Not so much about the World Cup in India. I think our one-day team is really different to this one and squad that we had here. The squad that we had here, it didn’t allow us the flexibility in some ways to be able to change the combinations a little bit. I think going forward we need to look at certain areas where we can get better.”
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He continued, “Finding depth in our batting has been area that we are trying to address. We are trying to do best as we possibly can. That’s certainly an area where we can look at. How we can not weaken out bowling attack, but ensure that we can have certain amount of depth in batting. As these games are going on and scores are becoming bigger and bigger, you can look at West Indies, they had Alzarri Joseph coming in at No. 11 and he can hit a mean ball. So, you have sides which have that depth. Obviously, we have got some challenges on that front. We need to work on that. Certainly that is something this series has shown us. We need to build on that depth.”
However, Team India’s lack of depth in the batting department was once again shown in the decider as Arshdeep Singh came into bat at No. 8, followed by Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal and Mukesh Kumar as well. With most of the star players rested for the Ireland T20Is, India’s next major assignment will be the Asia Cup as well. After taking on Pakistan in Pallekele on September 2, Team India will play against Nepal in their next as well.
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“We have a few guys coming back from injury in any case, so we are going to have to give them opportunities to play. I haven’t really thought about the Asia Cup at this stage to be honest. We’ll have some time off. We have a camp in Bangalore from the 23rd, so we’ll be assembling as a one-day team there. We’ll take it as it comes,” Rahul Dravid concluded.
