‘We are running out of time in a lot of ways’: Rahul Dravid on surprise team selection and injuries to key players | Cricket News

Team India head coach Rahul Dravid admitted that the injuries to key players such Jasprit Bumrah, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant and their uncertainties around their availability is the main reason why they decided to experiment with their playing XI in the second ODI against West Indies.
West Indies defeated India six wickets at Barbados on Saturday, claiming their first victory over India in nearly four years to level the series at 1-1 and force a decider.

“Honestly this was our last chance to be able to try out some of our players. We have got few of our players, who are injured and are in the NCA. With a month to go for the Asia Cup, we are running out of time in a lot of ways. We are hopeful that some of them would at least be fit for the Asia Cup and the World Cup,” said Dravid.

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“But we can’t take those chances. We have to try out other people and give them chances so that in a worst case scenario at least they have game time behind them.
“It gives us the opportunity to make some decisions on players. We just felt that in this series like this with only two and three matches to go before the Asia Cup, playing Virat and Rohit would not have given us to many answers but with the injuries and some sort of uncertainties around the injured players, we wanted to give some other boys chance so that if required then they can play,” he added.

The final ODI of the three-match series is on Tuesday at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Trinidad.
Rahul Dravid said despite the loss, the team management would continue with the experiments.

“I think we will always see the bigger picture. Being very honest with you at this stage in the cycle with Asia Cup and and World Cup coming up, I think in someway because of the injures we have, we have to look at the bigger picture. We have to look at things like that and we can’t get worried about every single game and every single series. If we do that I think that is going to be a make,” he said.

Rahul Dravid admitted that he was bit disappointed with the batting performances be his is not worries about what people are saying about certain individuals of the team.
“We are not worried about the opnion of other peoples. It is just that these are the talented boys we have in the country. They have all performed, they have all come here and it is upto them to make the opportunity count,” he said.

“I thought we were little disappointed today. We knew it was a tricky wicket. It was not an easy wicket to bat on. We knew that we needed to get somehow to 230 and 240 and we felt that that could have been a very competitive total.
“We kept losing wickets in bunches, Shubman and Ishan gave us a really good start but we needed somebody to carry on. We lost wickets in the middle and that’s why probably we were 50 60 run short.” he added.