Rahul Dravid lends support to promising 23-year-old despite poor outing against WI
After losing the T20 World Cup last year, Team India is all set to bring the trophy home this year. However, with the sudden exit of Virat Kohli, the current leadership reins are put on the shoulders of Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid.
Now that the team is sorting out its player’s list for the top eleven before the T20 showpiece event in Australia, BCCI is planning to give more youngsters opportunities. This is evident from the recently concluded series against West Indies. People poured love on the players by going on betting sites in India and placing their bets on these young players.
Last year, Ishan Kishan, a young and talented boy hailing from the state of Jharkhand, was bought by Mumbai Indian at a jaw-dropping amount of 15.25 crore. He gave an outstanding performance and stole everyone’s heart. But sadly enough, he failed to impress the audience in the T20 tournament last year and scored just 71 runs.
During the final T20 game, Ishan opened the match with Maharashtrian batter Ruturaj Gaikwad. The duo failed to score high runs, with Ruturaj scoring just 4 runs. India’s plan to try with a fresh opening pair failed miserably. After the game, Indian skipper Rahul Dravid presented his views on the new game plan.
“Judging youngsters by one series and one bad game is not fair. It is not an easy format and a lot of pressure is put on them. We cannot decide on their calibre with few games. As players to try to give consistent runs. We provide plenty of opportunities to the youth today and makes sure not to decode their fate with the team on game or series basis,” said the Indian skipper.
Although Ishan Kishan was not at his best in the series against West Indies, he has got Rahul Dravid’s support. He said, “Ishan was chosen to be the part of the series because of his potential and performance. It’s not easy for players to justify their performance in all the games”.
“You cannot pick a same number of games of every player and see how good they are. Be it Ruturaj Gaikwad or Avesh Khan we are not going to judge their game based on a one game. They have been selected to be a part of the team because they deserve to be here.”
“We will be boosting up their confidence and won’t let them fall down. It gets a little tricky in such situations. But one-off series won’t be a deciding factor whether they will stay in the team or not. I am not concerned with one bad the series but looking at the looking at what can we expect in the future for the whole group,” Dravid added further.
Next, there will be India vs Sri Lanka T20I series from Thursday. Considering the youngster’s bad performance, 27-year-old VentakshIyer was at his best. He scored 30 plus scores and picked two wickets. Suryakumar also showed his skills by scoring 107 runs in the series.To know more about the latest cricket buzz, check out BT10 India telegram channel and stay updated.
