India’s head coach Rahul Dravid doesn’t regret playing the ongoing Test series against Australia on spinner-friendly tracks as World Test Championship points are at a premium since most countries are preparing result-oriented pitches.
While India lead Australia 2-1 in the four-Test series, the ICC has rated the Indoretrack as “poor”. But Dravid defended their ploy of playing on such surfaces.
“I won’t go too much into it. Match referee is entitled to share his opinion. Doesn’t really matter if I agree with his reading or not. Doesn’t matter what I think. But sometimes with WTC points at stake, you tend to play on wickets that produce results,” Dravid said.
However, he didn’t forget to mention that data analysis of tracks prepared by home teams in the last few years has shown that the 22-yard strips in most places have been challenging.
“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,” the head coach said.
“There is a huge premium on results and if you draw a game like we did in Kanpurversus New Zealand, that sets you back in a home game. When you have 12 for a win and 4 for draw, you want to get a win ahead of a draw,” he said.
“We have played on some challenging wickets when we go overseas also. Played in South Africa recently (2022), where spinners were completely taken out of the game,” he said. “And everyone wants to produce wickets where eventually one wants results,” Dravid said.