ICC T20 WORLD CUP 2022

November 6, 2022

Rahul Dravid

Melbourne Cricket Ground

India

Post Match Media Conference

India 186/5, Zimbabwe 115

Q. What's your take on this much bigger World Cup stage than the one in September, Asia Cup? A lot of things have happened today, Netherlands beating South Africa, so what's your take on this format itself going into the semifinals?

RAHUL DRAVID: Yeah, it's a challenging format. It's a challenging tournament. When you have six teams and just one or two results don't go your way, as we've seen with some of the other teams, I think with us, as well, I think one or two results could have gone the other way. We could have won some games, as well.

Yeah, this is a very challenging format to be able to get through and get to the top four. Obviously it's nice, and we're happy about it, but obviously we know that hopefully we've got a couple of more good days in us as we go ahead.

Q. You spoke about uncertainties of this format and the challenge. With someone like Suryakumar doing it day in and day out, could you explain what kind of process goes into this type of consistency and this type of form?

RAHUL DRAVID: Yeah, it's incredible. That's why he is the No. 1 T20 player in the world at the moment, because of that consistency in a format where scoring at a strike rate that he does actually doesn't -- it's not easy to be consistent with the kind of strike rate he's going at. So it's just fantastic the way he's playing. I think he's been very clear in his processes. He's very clear about his tactics.

I think he's worked very hard. I think one of the things about Surya is just the amount of hard work that he's put in in the nets, in thinking about his game, his fitness. If I look at Surya from a couple of years ago, just to see how he takes care of his body and the amount of time he spends on his fitness, I think he's just really earning the reward for a lot of the hard work that he's put in on and off the field, and long may it continue.

I think he's been absolutely phenomenal for us. He's just a joy to watch. It's a pleasure to watch him bat when he's in that kind of form. Every time it's like he puts on a show, without a doubt.

Q. How do you think about someone like Rishabh Pant who's been on the bench for a while, and as a coach how do you deal when he steps back on to the turf, to keep his confidence levels high?

RAHUL DRAVID: Yeah, in a sense it's not that we ever lost confidence in Rishabh. I think we've got confidence in all of our 15 players who play here. It's only 11 guys who can play, and it depends on the combinations that you have. The very fact that they are here and they're part of the World Cup means that we have a lot of confidence in them. It means that anytime they can be called on to play in the XI.

That's really the role of when you pick 15 players and you pick 15 from so many other options that you have. That means you've actually got a lot of confidence in this 15. Yes, you can only play 11 at a time and some people sometimes miss out and don't have to play, but again, Rishabh is someone that as a lot of you would have been seeing, would have been traveling with us, he's been batting a lot in the nets, he's been hitting a lot of balls, doing a lot of fielding practice and sort of keeping practice and keeping himself ready.

The opportunity came for us today to give him an opportunity and to play him in this game, and yeah, obviously it didn't kind of work out today, but absolutely no -- I'm not bothered about that at all because I think he took the right option. His role was to take on the left-hand spinner which was there, and sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn't. I don't think we judge people on one game, and sometimes whether we play them or not is not based on one game. Sometimes it's just matchups, what we think would be something that we might need here or going ahead, as well, into the next part of the tournament; what are the skills we might need against which are the kind of bowlers we might come up against. So a lot of things go into these kind of decisions.

Q. This was a do-or-die match for us in the morning, especially when you got the news that South Africa is out of the tournament. Did you instruct your cricketers to do something extra, or what was the message towards them?

RAHUL DRAVID: Nothing. I never instructed them to try and do anything extra. I think at this level, most of these guys are incredibly motivated. You don't need to tell them to do anything extra. We stick to our processes. We stick to our preparation. We didn't do anything for this game.

I think I answered this question the last time, as well. Irrespective of whether we've played South Africa in this tournament or Pakistan or Zimbabwe or Bangladesh or Netherlands, I think our processes are -- the way we've gone about our practice sessions has been exactly the same. We haven't changed anything at all irrespective of the opponent, and I don't expect that to change going into the semifinals, as well.

Q. Any concern about Axar Patel's bowling?

RAHUL DRAVID: In a few games. But he's had good games, as well. Again, that's the nature of this tournament, this format.

The nature of this format is such that you can get taken apart, especially on a day like today when they lost a lot of wickets there, nothing to lose, they could go after it, and he's bowled well, as well. I think he bowled well in a couple of games and took a few wickets in those games, as well, and I thought he bowled a very good over against Bangladesh just before the rain break. He bowled an over for six runs.

It can happen in this format. I'm not necessarily concerned. Yes, he would have liked to have had a better day than today, but having said that, he's been someone who's actually bowled really well for us over the last period of time.

Q. Aside from winning, which of course you want to do every match, what else did you want to achieve from tonight? Like for example, you batted first; maybe was it to get the experience of bowling at night in the MCG, getting Rishabh in in because five of the other six spinners now left are taking the ball away from right-hand batters? What all did you want to achieve, and how did it go?

RAHUL DRAVID: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, really. A couple of the things that we did want to achieve was to try and bat first if we got the opportunity. Obviously we needed to win the toss for that. Just because honestly we had bowled first against Pakistan when we came here, we just wanted to experience what it was to sort of set a score in these kind of conditions.

Also we felt that if we batted first, it would give us an opportunity to play 20 overs and just get into that ability of still trying to get a par, par-plus score batting first.

Then, like you said, sometimes it gives us the opportunity, as well, to play Rishabh, keeping obviously this game in mind as well but just keeping the future in mind, as well, just opening up our options. I think everyone is available for selections; just because somebody missed out on this game doesn't mean that we can't go back to him and we can't decide on -- we might go the same way. We might go a different way, as well.

We just wanted to ensure that we have our options open, giving Rishabh an opportunity to have game time, which was really important. He was probably the only player in our team who hadn't played a game after western Australia. We played a couple of games in western Australia where he played, and then he didn't play the practice game. He was supposed to play the second one and that got washed out in Brisbane, I think, and then he's not played. So we just wanted to ensure that he also gets some game time so that at least all of our 15 have got some amount of game time in both the practice games and this tournament. If we have a whole set of 15 to choose from, we'll pick what we think is the best XI for the day against the opposition looking at the pitch.

Q. Talking about the next match against England in Adelaide, seeing today's match, the wicket is a little slower and the boundary is a little smaller. Do you think you need to plan specifically because the spinners play well there and any chance of playing Chahal there or any option there?

RAHUL DRAVID: Like I said earlier, I think we have a completely open mind about everyone in our 15. We believe anybody who comes into the 15 will not potentially make us weaker, the kind of squad we've picked. Anybody that we need to pick will actually not make us a weaker squad.

Again, we'll have to go there and see. I watched some of the games today and I know the tracks were slow and they gripped and they turned a bit. We might be playing on a completely new strip in Adelaide, and the strip we played with against Bangladesh, to be honest, did not spin. It was, again, a different kind of wicket, and it was played at Adelaide, as well.

I think I can't sit here now just after a game and predict what's going to happen there. We'll have a couple of days, we'll go and have a look at that wicket and see what we think it might do. Of course if it's slow we'll play according to those situations. If we think it might play differently, then we'll have to put up a squad to match that.

Q. (Question not in English.)

RAHUL DRAVID: It's not been easy for the opening batsman, powerplays, strike rates, other than I think in Sydney have been pretty low for all countries. Again, you have to adapt. Maybe when you go to Sydney you might have to play differently. Adelaide may be different, may not be different. I think it's all about adaptability for me.