India head coach Rahul Dravid said on Thursday that his team will not overreact to the close defeats at the 2022 Asia Cup Super 4 stage that has seen their title defence end before their final match.
India men’s team head coach and former captain Dravid spoke to broadcasters Star Sports ahead of the match against Afghanistan, a dead rubber, about the learnings from the Asia Cup.
“T20 Cricket, the margins are so small. I know we won the first game, it’s not that after we won that tight game against Pakistan, everything was perfect,” Dravid told former teammate Sanjay Manjrekar.
“We’ve lost a couple of games which have gone down [to the end], honestly on a wicket where it’s not been easy to defend. Let’s be honest. We’ve taken the games down to the last over and I’m not using that as an excuse. I still think we should have got over the line in at least one of those games.
“But, you know, we still had to learn whether we had won those two games or not. I mean, it’s not that we would have been perfect as a side [after one win] and just because we’ve lost a couple of close games doesn’t mean we are a terrible team. We were playing some pretty good cricket over the last eight months, nine months.”
Dravid also spoke about the selection restrictions on the original squad that was selected. India lost Ravindra Jadeja to what now seems to be a long-term injury while pacer Avesh Khan hasn’t played the last few matches due to illness.
“A couple of injuries, a couple of illnesses as well means that you know, sometimes the balance of your team gets a little out of whack and you know in tournaments like this where the margins are small and the games are tight, an edge here or a boundary there or wicket here... we’ve seen that in the tournament. It’s been a fantastic tournament from that perspective,” he said.
“And I think the whole thing is not to really overreact about things. I think we can go in extremes at times, we tend to overreact with wins and with losses as well. And I think that the kind of environment we’re trying to create is a pretty balanced one, whether we win or we lose, we don’t get too overexcited or too disappointed. But we see this as a journey that we are on and we want to learn and we want to keep improving. That hasn’t changed.”
Of course, as a result of the defeats, India’s reign as Asia Cup champions ended early with Pakistan and Sri Lanka qualifying for final. Dravid pointed out that the small disappointment from this tournament is that they are missing out on playing a big final in front of fans.
He said: “Having said that, the one disappointment is we don’t get to play one extra game. That would have been another learning opportunity. That would have been a, you know, terrific atmosphere out here on the 11th (final) and we don’t get that chance. We didn’t earn the chance to do that. And that, I guess, is a little disappointment that we don’t get that experience of you know, before the World Cup so we miss out on that. But otherwise the journey continues and we keep going on the same path.”
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