Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan has clarified that if the Indian cricket team is looking forward to doing well in forthcoming England tour, the preparations for that would need to start early. Indian team’s preparations before the South African tour was panned by one and all as they didn’t play any practice games but Shikhar is confident that they can do well in England if they can prepare on the kind of tracks that will be on offer during the five-match Test series starting August.

During the sidelines of a promotional event, Dhawan said, “England is going to be a very difficult series but we will have to play on those sort of pitches from early on and see how it goes there. If we have the right preparation and are able to give our best shot, there is no reason why we can’t win Test series in England.”

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Despite the fact that Shikha had an ordinary Test series in South Africa before being dropped after identical scores of 16 and 16 in the first Test, he came back well with two half-centuries and a ton in India’s emphatic 5-1 ODI series win and since then he has continued his purple patch with decent scores in the T20 matches. The southpaw batsman was visibly satisfied as doing well in the ‘Rainbow Nation’ according to him was a “dream come true”.

In fact, Shikhar acknowledged the fact that his performance in the ODIs and the subsequent T20Is helped him bag an A+ central contract. He said, “I was failing badly in overseas conditions, so to perform well (in ODIs and T20) gave me confidence. The performance in South Africa helped me win an A+ contract. I am very happy about that. It was a dream come true to perform like that in South Africa. I want to keep scoring runs consistently.”

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Dhawan has been retained by the IPL franchise Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and is expected to form a formidable opening partnership with their skipper David Warner. He said, “IPL is going to be exciting. It’s a fresh season and we have so many new faces and the team looks good. Hopefully, I will be fresh and fit to perform.”

However, Shikhar shared a message to the youngsters as well as he reckons that while IPL can be a platform to get in contention for a berth in the Indian squad, one should remain in the present and try to perform well.