Men’s ODI WC: Adaptability, Skills Execution On Variety Of Pitches, Conditions Key On Rahul Dravid’s Mind For Tournament Success

ODI World Cup: India head coach Rahul Dravid believes that the adaptability of teams and skills execution of the players in the playing eleven on a particular day over a variety of pitches and conditions across ten venues will be the key for achieving success in the 2023 Men’s ODI World Cup.

"I don't think this World Cup will be decided on how well you read the pitches. But it will be decided on how well you play on those pitches and variety of conditions you get to execute your plans. Adaptability is going to be a really good challenge in this World Cup and how teams adapt to various pitches, conditions, and bowling they will have to face.

"Honestly, we try to read the pitches as possibly well as we can and both teams will try to do that. But at the end, its about executing your skills on those pitches; it comes down to the guys who can actually execute those skills. Sure, you can read the pitch well when you decide to bat or bowl first, but at the end you need to execute those skills on that pitch," said Dravid in a press conference at MA Chidambaram Stadium on Friday.

India will be resuming its quest to win a global trophy when they open their 2023 World Cup campaign against Australia on Sunday. “All these factors will decide how successful the teams are and for us, it’s really important to build a squad that allows us to play two or three different combinations that we see on a particular day. Based on that, we will try to mix and match some of those combinations that we can put up."

Asked on what score will be safe for the opposition to win matches, Dravid said, "It’s going to be hard to predict as it’s the beauty of the World Cup; there are so many venues that these matches are going to be played in on so many different wickets on those venues. In some of the squares in India, you are going to have red-soil, black-soil and mix of red and black.

"Each one is going to be unique and one can’t be saying that – this or that is going to be a safe total and you just have to adapt, react based on those conditions and ground sizes will be different. Like, we will be playing here on a relatively bigger ground in Chennai as relatively compared to a Bangalore or Delhi. So, each one will be different and you will have to assess what it is like."

Dravid also feels that the Indian team could take the aggressive route in winning the middle-overs with both bat and ball in the competition. “It is quite obvious that the middle-overs have become quite important, especially with the extra fielder in the ring and the two new balls.”

"You got to get and in some ways, beat teams in the middle-overs by scoring more runs than them or by taking more wickets. So, there will be focus on trying to be a little bit aggressive with both bat and ball.

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"Wicket-taking in the first ten overs and death overs helps you a lot when you don’t have to bowl to the main batters or to the lower-order. Certainly, with the ball becoming softer and with the game as well as pitch does slow down, you can maximise it in first 30-35 overs and this could be a big factor."