Following his side’s T20I series loss to West Indies, Indian coach Rahul Dravid said that the lack of batting depth in the side is something that needs to be addressed without weakening the bowling attack so that team could get more flexibility in deciding the combinations. Nicholas Pooran and Brandon King’s blistering batting display at Lauderhill helped West Indies clinch a five-match T20I series 3-2 against India here at Central Broward Regional Park Stadium Turf Ground. India went in this series with four number 11s in each of their five T20Is, with very little ability to bat.
This lack of batting depth did not help India at all, especially in cases of top-order/middle-order collapses that consistently troubled India in the white-ball leg of the series. Dravid admitted that batting depth is indeed an issue for India. “I think in terms of our squad here, probably it did not allow us the flexibility in some ways to be able to change the combinations a little bit. But I think going forward; we have got to look at certain areas in which we can get better. Finding depth in our batting has been an area we are trying to address. We are trying to do the best we possibly can but that is certainly an area we can look at, how we cannot weaken our bowling attack but ensure we have a certain amount of depth in batting,” said Dravid in a post-match press conference. Several senior players like Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Shreyas Iyer etc missed this series due to injuries or workload management. India is searching for all-rounders and even Wasim Jaffer suggested that India needs some all-rounders. “The bulk of the [T20 World Cup] team will be from this XV,” Jaffer said. “You need to look at the youngsters to take you forward in this format. So players like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Mukesh Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, they are the future. But there are some gaps you need to fill. The major concern is the batting finishing at number seven. Quite a few of the top order are not getting a start and not converting it and quite a bit of that boils down to them feeling there is nobody to bat after number seven so they have to bat the bulk of the overs and when you go with that mindset, it does not help.” Dravid was however impressed with the performances of youngsters like Yashasvi Jaiswal (356 runs in six innings with one century and two fifties), Tilak Varma (173 runs in five innings at an average of 57.66 with one fifty and a wicket) and Mukesh Kumar (nine wickets across nine matches in all formats on this tour).
