The Indian team have finally made it into the semi-finals of the ongoing T20 World Cup in Australia. The Men in blue will be locking horns against England at the Adelaide Oval on Thursday.
India last played at this venue when they faced Bangladesh and somehow managed to survive Litton Das's scare as they outplayed the Bangla Tigers by five runs.
Talking about the pitch, Sunday’s encounter showed that the wicket was slower and the boundaries were a little smaller too. The Indian team head coach Rahul Dravid talked about what India have planned to do in a situation when they play the semifinal against England.
“It was, again, a different kind of wicket, and it was played at Adelaide, as well. 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."
“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," said Dravid in the post-match press conference.
He also spoke about strike rate and said, “Strike rate is different in every situation, ground, and condition. If you are playing a match where 200 runs are to be made, or like on this wicket, where according to us, some movement was happening. But we felt that 170-180 was ideal, according to the information we got from the boys inside."
“In a match like this, your strike rate has to be different. We have played in matches where 150 was a winning score and in Adelaide, 160 was a difficult score to chase in those conditions. In that scenario, you have to play the conditions."
“Honestly, you can’t say that this is the strike rate I want to play on, as this is the only certainty the World Cup has shown us. Conditions have been so unique in different cities that you have to adapt. 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 in this format”, he further added.
Dravid also admitted that it feels great when your team makes it to the semi-finals.
“It’s a challenging format and 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."
“This is a very challenging format to be able to get through and get to the top four. 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”, he stated.
“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 (different) for this game, he said.
“Irrespective of whether we’ve played South Africa in this tournament or Pakistan or Zimbabwe or Bangladesh or Netherlands, our processes and 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", he signed off.