Rahul Dravid, India head coach for the Sri Lanka tour, on Sunday said that he hopes the white-ball squad is able to give good performances and with that, they are able to knock the doors of selectors for a callup for the T20 World Cup which is set to be played later this year.
India and Sri Lanka will lock horns in three ODIs and three T20Is, beginning July 13. The likes of Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, and Suryakumar Yadav are in the white-ball squad and they all would be looking to cement their place in the T20 World Cup squad. “So like you said, rightly there are a lot of people in the squad who are pushing for places or looking to cement their places in the sort of T20 World Cup. But the key goal for everyone in the squad and in the team is to try and win the series, we have had discussions around it. That is the primary objective. We are going out there to win the series, hopefully, people get the opportunity to put in good performances in the course of us trying to win the series, and knock the doors of the selectors,” said Dravid while replying to an ANI query during a pre-departure press conference on Sunday.
Further talking about how he would be in constant touch with the team management in England, Dravid said: “These are the only three games before the T20 World Cup. I am sure that the selectors and management will have an idea by now about what they are looking for. There’s an IPL before the World Cup. In that sense, there may be one or two places the management and selectors might be looking to fill. So give them a few more options, that would be the goal in the upcoming three T20Is.”
“We have a couple of selectors travelling with us, we’ll interact with them once we land in Sri Lanka. Had a little bit of contact with the management in England. Haven’t disturbed them during the WTC final, so will touch base with them over the next couple of weeks and see what are their thoughts and what they are thinking for the T20 WC and whether we can implement that in these next three T20Is,” he added.
For the limited series against Sri Lanka, Shikhar Dhawan would don the captaincy hat. Talking about leading the side for the first time, Dhawan said: “So it is a great honour for me to be the captain of the Indian team. I am looking forward to it, we have all played under Rahul Dravid’s coaching at least once, I was the captain of India A at that time, we had played against Bangladesh. I feel we guys think together, we are looking forward to the series, we will be looking to build positive things and there should be a very happy environment in which boys can express themselves and we get the best out of them.”