‘Looks can deceive’

Updated On: 21 November, 2023 01:55 AM IST | Ahmedabad | Ashwin Ferro

After thumping loss to Australia, India head coach Rahul Dravid admits team misread pitch; insists ball was stopping more when Rohit & Co were batting

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Rahul Dravid; (right) India’s Virat Kohli after being dismissed for 54 by Australia skipper Pat Cummins in Ahmedabad on Sunday. Pic/Getty Images

Even as millions of fans still cannot get their heads around what went wrong with this Indian team that won 10-out-of-10 matches only to lose the World Cup final to Australia rather tamely, head coach Rahul Dravid had a pretty simple answer. “We were around 30-40 runs short. If we had got to 280-290 and then Australia were 60 for 3, it would have been a very different game,” said Dravid to a packed post-match media conference at the Narendra Modi Stadium late on Sunday night after India lost by six wickets.

Not much dew in evening

The former skipper was also candid in his admission that the India camp may have misread the pitch, with Rohit Sharma revealing at the toss that he would have preferred to bat anyway had he won the coin-flip. “The pitch played really well later on. Sometimes looks can be a bit deceiving. It just felt like the ball was stopping a little bit more in the afternoon [when India were batting] than it did in the evening [during the Australian innings]. And not that there was a lot of dew either, but I felt the ball came on to the bat a lot better in the evening,” he said.

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