Dravid rues missed chances in 1st innings after 1st test loss
New Delhi: India coach Rahul Dravid has rued the missed opportunities by the Indian batters in the first innings as he felt they were 70 runs short in the end after the loss to England in the first Test.
After England were bowled out for 246 in the first innings, India were able to get a dominant lead of 190. However, most of the batters failed to capitalise on the starts they got and scored a hundred.
The likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rohit Sharma, Shreyas Iyer got out to big shots, and essentially threw away their wickets in the end.
England would bounce back well in the second innings and set India a target of 230 chase thanks to a brilliant 196 from Ollie Pope. The batters struggled in the second innings as Tom Hartley picked up 7 wickets and the visitors ended up winning the match by 28 runs.
Speaking at the post-match press conference, Dravid said it was challenging for his side on Sunday and felt they had left 70 runs on the board. The India coach said that it wasn’t easy to chase 230 runs on that pitch.
“It was challenging today. I wouldn’t be so harsh as to judge them today. In fact, if anything, I probably thought we left 70 runs on the board in the first innings. In our first innings, when conditions were pretty good to bat in on Day 2, I thought, in those kind of situations, we got ourselves good starts, and we couldn’t really capitalise.”
“We didn’t get a hundred, we didn’t have someone getting a big hundred for us. I just felt we left those 70-80 runs in the hut in the first innings. The second innings was always going to be challenging. It’s tough, not easy to chase 230 here,” said Dravid.
We shouldn’t have been chasing 230 runs to win: Rahul Dravid
Dravid further commented that his side shouldn’t have been chasing 230 runs in the end to win and felt that Ollie Pope’s 196 was the difference in the game.
“To be honest, 230 was a pretty challenging score on this wicket in the fourth innings. It’s always going to be challenging in India. A score of 230 on a fourth-day wicket, which was turning. We probably shouldn’t have been chasing 230. It took a truly exceptional innings to get us to chase that amount of runs.”
“To me, that really was the difference in the game. I thought the third day where Ollie Pope came out and played a fantastic innings. that’s something that set us back. He played a lot of high-risk shots and excecuted them superbly. That’s an incredible innings. 196 on a wicket like that where nobody else got fifty in their side was the difference in the game,” said Dravid.