Former India head coach Ravi Shastri reckons India’s batting top-order was “a bit timid” in T20 cricket when he was the coach. He said this while reflecting on India’s newly adopted aggressive, gung-ho batting approach under new head coach Rahul Dravid and skipper Rohit Sharma.
India suffered an embarrassing show at the T20 World Cup 2021: losing their first two matches to Pakistan and New Zealand, both while batting first, paved way for India’s group-stage exit from the T20 World Cup last year.
However, since then, which is since Rahul Dravid took over, India haven’t lost a single T20I series – winning 6 out of 7 and drawing one. They are the firm favourites for the upcoming Asia Cup 2022 and a strong title contender for the T20 World Cup in Australia later in the year.
Ravi Shastri says he had discussed batting frailties when he was coach
The striking change in India’s batting under Sharma-Dravid has been their aggressive nature of batting, where batters have put a lesser premium on their wickets and batted with more risks than they did under Kohli-Shastri. In particular the top-three.
Ravi Shastri revealed that he had also discussed India’s conservative batting approach then but said the top-order batted timidly because of the batters to follow.
“They should not change the approach (they have shown of late). Even when I was coach, we discussed we were a bit timid at the top considering the players we had down the order,” Shastri said in a press conference organised by Star Sports ahead of the Asia Cup 2022.
The 60-year-old commentator also asserted that India should continue with their new modus operandi and shouldn’t change it even if they lose a few games.
“It is the right approach. You will lose a few games in between but if you start winning with this approach you can take that confidence in big games and use the same tactics,” Shastri added.
Rohit Sharma and his batters will get to flex their attacking muscle in the upcoming Asia Cup 2022. India’s first match of Asia Cup 2022 is on August 28 against arch-rivals Pakistan. Both the teams have already been hurt in the bowling departments with the ruling out of Jasprit Bumrah and Shaheen Afridi due to injuries.
India’s squad for Asia Cup 2022:
Rohit Sharma (Captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicket-keeper), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, R. Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan
Standbys: Shreyas Iyer, Axar Patel and Deepak Chahar
Pakistan Squad: Babar Azam (c), Shadab Khan, Asif Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Haider Ali, Haris Rauf, Iftikhar Ahmed, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shahnawaz Dahani, Usman Qadir.
