India Head coach, Rahul Dravid finally revealed why the senior players like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were benched. To prepare themselves physically and mentally fit before the World Cup, they took this decision.
As the World Cup just has a few weeks left therefore India must be fully prepared to show their dominance in their home ground. Not only this, India will play their first match against Australia only in Chennai on 8th October.
Rahul Dravid about Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli
“With people like Rohit and Virat specifically, from our perspective, it’s really important that we get them to the first game of the World Cup physically and mentally in the space they want to be in. At this level, the amount of cricket that they have played, they know how they need to prepare themselves. A lot of decisions are made in discussion with them in an effort to try and get.
All our players, obviously not only the two of them, but certainly the senior and the more experienced guys kind of have their routines and know what they need to do to get into the first game in the right frame of mind.
So a lot of these decisions we discuss with them on how best they would like to prepare in the lead up to big events like the World Cup. Based on those discussions, we came with some mutual decisions on deciding probably these two games were good games to take off, just to refresh mentally more than anything else, and then come back from Rajkot, and then it’s going to be a tough couple of months ahead of us.”
Not only this , Dravid reveals why they backed Suryakumar Yadav for the World Cup
“I don’t think he needs to worry about the 27th; we have picked our team for the World Cup and Surya is in it. We’ve made this decision and we completely back him because he’s got a certain quality and ability that we’ve seen. Yes, we’ve seen those qualities at the moment in T20 cricket, but we know the kind of impact a player like him can make batting at six.
He can change the course of a game, so we have completely backed him. We are very clear about that. There’s been total clarity on the fact that we are completely behind him and we know hopefully he’ll be able to turn it around.
These three games, he is someone who will get all three games or at least the first couple certainly to be able to again develop and keep growing in his journey as a one-day cricketer, but in terms of selection, no, we’ve made our decision.”
Also he shared the experience of Ashwin has,
“Having someone of Ashwin’s experience to come back is always good for us. Also he’s got the ability to be able to contribute with the bat at Number 8. He is someone who we have always thought of where in case there were certain injuries or opportunities opened up. He was always part of our plans. I know he hasn’t played a lot of one-day cricket in the last bit, but someone of his experience can deal with that really well.”