With WTC points at stake, everyone wants to win: Rahul Dravid defends 'poor' Indore track

Ahmedabad, March 7

India’s head coach Rahul Dravid doesn’t regret playing the ongoing Test series against Australia on spin-friendly tracks as the World Test Championship points are at a premium and most countries are preparing result-oriented pitches.

India lead Australia 2-1 in the four-Test series after the first three games ended inside three days. The “poor” rating of the Indore track by ICC match referee Chris Broad has once again raised questions about playing on turners.

“I won’t go too much into it. The match referee is entitled to share his opinion,” Dravid said. “It doesn’t really matter if I agree with his reading or not. But sometimes with the WTC points at stake, you tend to play on wickets that produce results,” he added.

“There is a huge premium on results and if you draw a game like we did in Kanpur versus New Zealand (in 2021), it sets you back in a home game. When you have 12 points for a win and four for a draw, you want to get a win ahead of a draw,” he added.

Tough wickets overseas

“It can happen, not only in India but across the world. If you see, sometimes it is difficult to get that balance perfectly right for everyone and that can happen not only here but in other places as well,” he added.

“We have played on some challenging wickets when we go overseas also. Played in South Africa recently (in 2022), where spinners were completely taken out of the game,” he added. “And everyone wants to produce wickets where eventually one wants results. You will probably prepare wickets where the ball holds a bit more sway over the bat and that’s necessary and part of the game,” he added.

Difficult for batting

The series has seen just one century, by India captain Rohit Sharma, and seven half-centuries so far. Dravid said one has to be realistic on challenging tracks.

“You need to be realistic as to what is a good performance on these challenging wickets. Not only here but if you look at the last three to four years, wickets have generally got challenging everywhere. So you need to be realistic what the benchmarks are now, what standards are on these kinds of surfaces; just one good performance can change the game. We saw that with Rohit’s performance (in Nagpur). It might not be a double hundred but a 50, 60 or 70 could actually be a very good score in some conditions,” he said. — PTI

Spinner Murphy relishing battles with Kohli

Ahmedabad: Rookie Australian spinner Todd Murphy is relishing his “daunting” battles with the Indian batters, especially Virat Kohli, having dismissed the superstar thrice in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Murphy and greenhorn left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann have done the job for Australia in the series so far, ably supporting veteran Nathan Lyon. The 22-year-old has taken 11 wickets in three games at an average of 21.81 and an economy of 2.61. He took only one wicket in Indore, trapping Kohli from around the wicket, but kept the pressure up by stemming the flow of runs. Murphy said he has enjoyed all his battles with Kohli thus far. “It’s been awesome. When I look back to Nagpur, when he walked out to bat, I was at the top of my mark thinking this is as good as it gets… getting to bowl to a guy like that,” he said. “So, to be able to have that for the first three Tests has been awesome, a really enjoyable battle and no different to bowling to a lot of their guys. When they stand there it is daunting at times,” he added. PTI

Virat will bounce back: Ponting

Dubai: Ricky Ponting won’t assess Virat Kohli’s form on the basis of his performance in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy because the pitches have been a “nightmare” for all batters in the contest so far. Kohli, who has not scored a fifty in his last 14 innings, has managed just 111 runs in the three Tests against Australia but Ponting is not worried about the lack of runs. “I’m not looking at anybody’s form in this Test series because for a batsman it has just been an absolute nightmare,” Ponting said. “For Virat… champion players always find a way. It might seem like he’s in a bit of a drought at the moment and he might not be scoring the runs that we all expect him to score. But I know he will bounce back,” he added.