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Following India’s loss to Australia in the 2023 World
Cup title match in Ahmedabad, Rahul Dravid stated that his team was “30-40
runs short” of a respectable total in the end, but it wasn’t because of a
fearful attitude in the middle overs.
“I won’t agree that we played with fear. We had
80 runs in 10 overs. We had lost wickets, and when you lose wickets you have to
change your strategy,” Dravid said at the post-match press conference.
India reached 80 at the end of the powerplay after
Rohit Sharma’s 31-ball 47 had set them on their way. However, over the
remainder of the innings, they could only muster four boundaries, ultimately
finishing at 240. Dravid said that the slowdown was not due to a lack of
effort, but rather to the regular loss of wickets.
bowled really well and we had lost three wickets. So a
period of consolidation was needed, and every time we thought we could get on
the attack, we would lose a wicket,” he said. “If you lose wickets,
you have to rebuild. We didn’t set out to play defensively.”
Even though Australia eventually reached the target
with seven overs remaining and six wickets in hand, Dravid felt that the
outcome of the match may have been different if India had scored 30 to 40 more
runs on what he thought to be a more difficult surface to bat on in the
afternoon.
“Just felt like the ball was stopping in the
afternoon a little bit more than it did in the evening. It felt like the ball
came on to the bat a lot better in the evening. There was that period where the
ball was stopping and we weren’t able to get boundaries. We were able to rotate
the strike but we weren’t able to get those boundaries.
“If we had got to 280-290 and they were 60 for 3
then it might have been a very different game. But 240, I think they were
always one partnership away from getting there.”