Rahul Dravid said- ‘It has been Disappointing For Us’
Rahul Dravid said- ‘It has been disappointing for us, Dravid turned to India to improve the way they finished the match after overtaking England’s fourth-innings heroics.
Head coach Dravid wants the team to be face-to-face:-
India paid the price for failing to make the most of their gains in recent Test defeats against England and South Africa earlier this year, in a trend that head coach Dravid wants the team to face.
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Dravid said, ‘It has been disappointing for us. “We’ve had some opportunities in South Africa as well and here, I think it’s something that we need to focus on, that we need to work on.
“We have been very good over the years in terms of taking wickets and winning those Test matches. But we haven’t been able to do that in the last few months.
“It could be a variety of factors: maybe we just need to maintain that intensity, maintain that level of fitness, or maintain that level of performance through a Test match.”
He was instrumental in bringing England back into the match despite a 132-run lead in the first innings as India was bowled out for 245 in the second innings of 190/4.
Dravid talked about how his team has started matches on the front foot but seems to have lost steam along the way, not ending with the same level of performance that once again against England at Edgbaston happened.
Dravid said, ‘We did not bat well in the second innings as well:-
He said, ‘If you look at all the third innings of these two Test matches abroad and this batting has also probably not been good.
“In both the regions, we have started the Test matches well, but we haven’t finished well. We need to get better at it and definitely need to improve.”
Spinners have historically been India’s strength in Tests, so it was difficult to single out Ravichandran Ashwin given India’s recent struggles with taking wickets in the fourth innings.
Dravid said, “You can always look at things and see the composition of your team. Shardul has done a good job for us in these games.”
Getting out in a test match is not always easy:-
He said, ‘It is not always easy to get a player like Ash out in a Test match. But having said that when we looked at the wicket on the first day, it had a very good layer of grass. We thought there was a lot in it. This is for fast bowlers.
“Even going into the last day the wicket hasn’t really turned – whether it’s for Jack Leach, whether it’s for Ravindra Jadeja, who bowled in a Test match.
In any case, maybe because the weather played a role in the first days, and there weren’t long phases of the sun, the wicket didn’t break as much as we expected or spin as much as we had hoped.
“It’s easy to look back on the fifth day and say it would have been nice to have a second spinner in the fourth innings, but again that didn’t turn out to justify it.”
I Don’t wanna make excuses:-
Dravid said, ‘I don’t want to make any excuse. “I wasn’t part of the team at that time. India was on a roll at that time. England might have been in a slightly different position at the time.
But he has come here on the back of three consecutive wins against New Zealand. We have had a long gap between Test cricket, but no excuse.
“They played well in five days. We had our chances, we played well in the first three days. We couldn’t keep that up. So Test cricket is tough.
So Test cricket means you have to be able to keep those performances right for five days. We weren’t able to do that and they outperformed us and they deserved to win this Test match.”