India head coach Rahul Dravid said that India isn’t too focused on the brand of Cricket England intends to bring and that his bowlers won’t be relying on the opportunities England’s aggressive style might offer.
It’s just been seven days since Rahul Dravid traveled to England yet he hasn’t missed the commotion around England’s most recent update under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes.
The India head coach couldn’t watch “too much” of England’s series win over the Black Caps, he believes and that is perhaps why he so adeptly made a case for the “very positive brand of cricket” that India too has been playing over the last few years.
“To be honest, we’ve been a pretty positive side as well,”
Dravid said on Wednesday (June 29) in the lead-up to India’s fifth Test against England.
“We were second in the World Championship cycle last year. This year, we find ourselves third in the table just underneath the top two. So we’ve been pretty successful. I mean we were pretty successful in getting 20 wickets and winning Test matches. That for me is positive cricket as well.
“Last week, we prepared as well as we could in Leicester. We had a really good four-day game, we were able to mix and match and give a lot of our guys’ good opportunities against our bowlers… on a slightly challenging wicket, so we feel we’ve done the best we can in the schedule that we’ve had, to prepare our boys to the best of our ability. Some of the boys have missed out on playing in the T20I series against South Africa and also in Ireland as well, so we tried to prioritize this Test match and try and get the preparation as best as we possibly can, to be able to compete and play our brand of cricket – which I think is a very positive brand of cricket, you know, against any opposition and I guess against anything that they throw at us.”
Dravid said that India isn’t too focused on the brand of cricket England intends to bring and that his bowlers won’t be relying on the opportunities England’s aggressive style might offer.
“Any which way they play gives us opportunities, to be very honest. I mean, we are leading the series 2-1 and any which way you play the game, we believe it’s up to us. We’ve got to focus on our cricket and not so much worry about what England is doing and what it is they’re playing. We’ve got to focus on what we’ve got to do.
“Credit to them, they played well but we’re pretty confident as well. We believe we’ve been playing some very good cricket, positive cricket over the last few years. We believe that if we play well then we’ve got every chance to do well against them.”