India’s head coach, Rahul Dravid, said on Tuesday, July 5, that the fact that his batters often fail in the third innings of a Test match is worrying and that he will meet with the national selectors to talk about it. Under Dravid’s coaching, India has lost its last three away Test matches, two in South Africa and the most recent one in Birmingham.
India couldn’t defend 378 in the game they just played against England at Edgbaston. It was a huge goal, but the English batters made it look easy when they went after the score very early on the fifth day. India had a 2-1 lead in the series before the final game was postponed last year, but they didn’t take advantage of it. Instead, England tied the series at 2-2.
“Cricket has so much going on that we don’t have time to think. In two days, we’ll talk about something completely different. But we will try to think about what we did in this show. Every match teaches us something, and you usually learn something from them. We need to think about why we can’t bat well in the third innings of a Test match and why we can’t take 10 wickets in the fourth innings,” Rahul Dravid said at the post-match press conference.
Rahul Dravid reflects on the loss
As was already said, India lost its last three Test matches that were played outside of India. They lost two Tests in South Africa because their players couldn’t defend 240 runs in Johannesburg and 212 runs in Cape Town. In their most recent test, which took place in England, they couldn’t defend 378 runs, which was an even bigger total. India’s last six World Test Championship games will be played on the subcontinent, and Dravid hopes to talk to Chetan Sharma about the team’s problems during those games.
“The next six Test matches are all in the subcontinent, with two in Bangladesh and four in India. We’ll be focusing on those games, but coaches and selectors will sit down and talk about this loss. This review happens after every game, so when we go to SENA again, we’ll be ready for it,” he said.