T20 World Cup: Rahul Dravid Highlights Importance of Rishabh Pant Ahead Of Semi Final Against ENG
New Delhi: With India now setting up a semifinal showdown with England at the Adelaide Oval in Men’s T20 World Cup, one can feel optimistic about the side’s chances. India head Rahul Dravid spoke with the same amount of optimism as he highlighted the importance of Rishabh Pant in the squad.
Dravid in a press conference ahead of the semi final said,”Yeah, in a sense it’s not that we ever lost confidence in Rishabh. We’ve got confidence in all of our 15 players who play here. It’s only 11 guys who can play, and it depends on the combinations that you have.
“The very fact that they are here and they’re part of the World Cup means that we have a lot of confidence in them. It means that anytime they can be called on to play in the XI.
“Yes, you can only play 11 at a time and some people sometimes miss out and don’t have to play, but again, Rishabh is someone that as a lot of you would have been seeing, has been travelling with us.
“He’s been batting a lot in the nets, he’s been hitting a lot of balls, doing a lot of fielding practice and sort of keeping practice and keeping himself ready. The opportunity came for us today (Sunday) to give him an opportunity,” he reasoned.
In fact, Dravid was happy about Pant’s intent against left arm spinner Sean Williams but the execution was wrong.
“Obviously, it didn’t kind of work out today, but absolutely no — I’m not bothered about that at all because I think he took the right option.
“His role was to take on the left-arm spinner which was there, and sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn’t.”
Pant being a left hander also gives the team variations among specialist batters.
“Sometimes it gives us the opportunity, as well, to play Rishabh, keeping obviously this game in mind as well but just keeping the future in mind, just opening up our options.
Inputs from PTI