A tour of the West Indies, a probable Asia Cup in Dubai and maybe a few more ODIs–that’s what India are looking at before hosting the World Cup at home. The final ODI against Australia thus is a time India will be taking cognizance of a fairly successful home season–3-0 against Sri Lanka, 3-0 against New Zealand–as they square off in Chennai with the series locked 1-1. India head coach Rahul Dravid feels they have ticked more or less all the boxes for their World Cup preparation in these eight ODIs.
“We have got a lot more clarity at the end of these nine games irrespective of what happens tomorrow,” said Dravid in Chennai on Tuesday. “We need to keep building on that clarity. For us, it is now the different playing XI combinations and just ensuring that we play different combinations at times just to ensure that we are able to do that in the World Cup and we are not surprised by anything.”
As much as India would have liked to play more ODIs to get into the groove, they are looking at at least 10 weeks of other formats of cricket, what with the IPL and World Test Championship final at the Oval coming up. “It’s hard to add on games, especially at that time of the year. In India it's monsoon. It's really our off season, we are probably not going to get too many more games in our conditions.”
There is still no clarity on whether Jasprit Bumrah, Prasidh Krishna and Deepak Chahar will recover from their injuries in time but Dravid said they already have “narrowed” down on the probable squad. “We have almost sort of narrowed it down to 17-18 players. We have a few guys who are sort of recovering from injuries and might come into the mix, depending on the time frame of their recoveries and how long it takes for them to come back. But all in all, we are pretty much in a good space, we are pretty clear about the kind of team we want to play. Hopefully, we are able to give these guys who we have zeroed in on, as many playing opportunities as we can.”
{{/usCountry}}There is still no clarity on whether Jasprit Bumrah, Prasidh Krishna and Deepak Chahar will recover from their injuries in time but Dravid said they already have “narrowed” down on the probable squad. “We have almost sort of narrowed it down to 17-18 players. We have a few guys who are sort of recovering from injuries and might come into the mix, depending on the time frame of their recoveries and how long it takes for them to come back. But all in all, we are pretty much in a good space, we are pretty clear about the kind of team we want to play. Hopefully, we are able to give these guys who we have zeroed in on, as many playing opportunities as we can.”
{{/usCountry}}Shreyas Iyer’s injury has opened up an opportunity for Suryakumar Yadav at No 4 but he is yet to score a run in this series after getting two first-ball beauties from Mitchell Starc. “Obviously, it’s unfortunate for Shreyas to get injured,” said Dravid. “He’s one of those guys we think will bat for us at No.4 and he has been given a lot of time in that position. I’m not really concerned so much about Suryakumar. You have got two first-ballers against two pretty good balls.
“One of the things about Surya is he is also learning the 50-over game a little bit. The T20 game is slightly different. Even though you hadn't played for India for a long time, in T20 cricket, he played nearly 10 years of IPL, and a lot of IPL cricket, which is like international cricket. Even though he has played a lot of T20 cricket, I think he has not played a lot of one-day cricket. We just need to give him some time and be patient with him. We certainly see the upside of him doing well, which is very good for the side.”