'Lot of thought goes into experiments'

India have experimented with their batting order quite a lot in this T20 World Cup. According to Dravid, it is important for any team to understand the dimensions of a game before experimenting.

Indian head coach Rahul Dravid on Wednesday claimed it was important for any team to be flexible in the T20 format. India have experimented with their batting order quite a lot in this T20 World Cup. Virat Kohli has been sent to open with Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant has played in the number 3 position in the tournament while Axar Patel has been moved up the order during the game against Pakistan. Some of the experiments have worked, while some hasn’t. Specially, Kohli has not been effective at all as an opener.

Rohit Sharma and co experimenting at will in T20 WC

India, who topped Group A and start their Super 8 campaign against Afghanistan on Thursday, will look to keep up the winning run.

“I just think each situation is unique. It’s hard to keep something set in stone. At least that’s my belief. A lot of times you make these changes, keeping something specific in mind. It works sometimes, it doesn’t work sometimes. I think you can’t judge everything only on the results. The Pakistan game, we moved Axar up the order. There was a specific thinking around it. There are other situations where we have moved Rishabh a little bit up the order. So, there’s been a little bit of thinking around that. So yeah, there’s a lot of thought that goes into some of these things and we do think about it,” Dravid said in the pre-match press conference.

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Flexibility needed in T20 cricket

However, the outgoing Indian coach made it clear that the flexibility is needed much more in T20 cricket rather than Test or ODI cricket.

“But again, I mean, I don’t think the Test format will have too many flexibilities. One day cricket again, we are seeing that, depending. But I think in the T20 format, especially with the match-ups, with the dimensions of ground, with the kind of conditions, you do see it happening quite a lot more in the T20 format where I guess every over or every 10 balls is actually quite critical and matters much more than probably it does in another format. I think most teams, I think, are trying to make use of that, trying to make use of match-ups, trying to make use of the best use of their resources to try and get maximize the 120 balls that they can,” Dravid added.