India’s head coach Rahul Dravid was delighted with the performance of the team after they defeated New Zealand by a gargantuan margin of 372 runs at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Monday and registered their biggest Test win.
India was able to get the remaining five wickets on the fourth day’s morning within 43 minutes as Jayant Yadav ran through New Zealand’s lower order, picking four wickets.
With players like Shreyas Iyer, Mayank Agarwal, Axar Patel, and Jayant Yadav grabbing their opportunities in the two-match Test series, Dravid stated it is a good headache to have as far as the team’s selection is concerned. Players like KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, and Mohammad Shami will return to the team’s Test squad for the tour of South Africa and thus India has a potent bench strength.
Rahul Dravid said after the team’s win, “It’s a good situation to be in (on team selection), we had some injuries in the lead-up to this game, that’s something which will challenge us. The boys are playing a lot of cricket, in different formats, and we need to ensure the work load on them. But everyone is challenging for places, that’s good to see with the amount of cricket coming up. But it is a good headache to have”.
On the other hand, India came close to winning the opening Test match at Kanpur but could not take the final wicket. Dravid revealed that the boys were disappointed after the first Test as they could not finish the job. India had dominated the opening Test for the major part but could not go all the way and had to share the WTC points.
Dravid added, “Good to finish the Test series on a winning note, came very close in Kanpur, but couldn’t take that last wicket. Credit to the team, they have pulled themselves back from tough situations and were a bit disappointed at not finishing it off in Kanpur. Good to see the boys step up and take their opportunities, we were missing a few seniors, but the youngsters have taken their chances”.
Meanwhile, India declared their second innings at 276-7 and took a massive lead of 539 runs. A lot of cricket boffins reckon that the hosts could have declared earlier. However, Dravid added a lot of time was still left in the game and they wanted to give their batters a chance to bat in the challenging conditions.
The head coach concluded, “We didn’t need to think about it (about a possible declaration), we had a lot of time and we knew we could bowl them out. Also, a lot of youngsters needed the chance to bat in challenging conditions – to play on red-soil wickets, with this kind of bounce, it’ll only help them grow as players, especially when they travel and play in different conditions. We knew we had enough time to bowl them out once again”.
India will be delighted with their performance and would look to continue the same on the forthcoming tour of South Africa, where they will play three Tests and as many ODIs.
