India has set a challenge for itself – Rahul Dravid

Mumbai: Assessing his team’s performance in the ongoing ICC World Cup 2023, India head coach Rahul Dravid has outlined a very specific task that the Indian team has set for itself. India have dominated the 2023 World Cup, winning all nine of their group-stage matches and are the only undefeated team in the tournament. India  face New Zealand in the first semi-final of the World Cup on Wednesday at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Coach Dravid revealed the reason behind the Indian team remaining undefeated was a specific mission assigned to the team.

Speaking to Star Sports, Dravid said, we have set a small challenge for ourselves before the World Cup. Given the passion of our fans in nine different cities we really wanted to give our best performance and I think the boys responded and performed really well. During the league stage matches of the World Cup, India was the only team to play at nine different venues. Dravid was very happy with his recent performance, the convincing win over Netherlands in Bengaluru.

We had six days off, so it was really good to get a match before the semi-finals, Rahul Dravid said on India’s successful nine-city tour. It was good that we got what we needed, five of our batsmen did well and two of them scored good centuries. He also believed that the team benefited from the experiments with the ball. “After scoring big, even with the ball, it gave us a chance to mix it up a bit and look at some other options that we might not have expected. But we may need to.

Dravid had full confidence in his batting lineup and was particularly pleased with the performance of his middle-order. He said, I think our middle order has been fantastic. Obviously, the top order gets a chance to bat all the time and he is scoring a lot of runs for us. When you look at the numbers leaderboard, you will see Kohli and Sharma, and rightly so. They are batting brilliantly and batting really well. But the middle order is important because you always play in pressure situations.

The coach said, they don’t always play every single game, sometimes they get a chance to bat after 30 overs when the ball is soft, when the ball is old. The wicket is also getting slower, and it’s the same for them to bat, whether it’s Shreyas [Iyer], whether it’s KL [Rahul], you know Jaddu [Ravindra Jadeja] and Surya [Suryakumar Yadav] as well. “It gives us confidence that we have the experience, we have the ability and we also have the form and are playing really well.”