Asia Cup 2022: Couple of tight defeats doesn’t mean India are a terrible team, says Rahul Dravid

Indian head coach Rahul Dravid shed light on the team’s disappointing run in the Asia Cup 2022. The Men in Blue were knocked out of the multi-team tournament after they were stunned by Sri Lanka by six wickets in their second match of the Super Four stage on Tuesday.

India had earlier lost to Pakistan by five wickets and thus they were eliminated after their loss against the Island country. The Rohit Sharma-led team had posted 181 runs against Pakistan and scored 173 runs against Sri Lanka but could not defend the total at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, Dubai, and lost on the penultimate ball in both matches.

Dravid said that a couple of tight defeats doesn’t mean India is a terrible team and they are going to bounce back stronger.

“I think, irrespective of whether we won those games or not, you have to put things in perspective. In T20I cricket, the margins are so small and I know we won the first game. It’s not that after we won the tight game against Pakistan, it’s not that everything was perfect,” Rahul Dravid told Star Sports on Thursday.
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“Just because we lost a couple of tight games doesn’t mean we are a terrible team. We have played some good cricket over the last 8-9 months. A couple of injuries and a couple of illnesses as well, sometimes the balance of your team gets a little off track, and in a tournament like this where the margins are small and the competition is tight, small things can influence the result,” he added.

The former Indian captain opined that it was not easy to defend at Dubai but feels the team should have got over the line in one of these two matches.

“We lost a couple of games on a wicket, honestly, that was not easy to defend. We have taken the game down to the last ball. I am not using that as an excuse because I still think we should have gone over the finish line in at least one of those two games,” Dravid said.

“The whole thing is not to overreact about things. At times, we tend to overreact with wins as well as losses. I think we are trying to create a pretty balanced environment whether we win or lose, we don’t get too overtly excited or too disappointed. We see this as a journey that we want to keep going,” he added.

In fact, India defeated Pakistan by five wickets in the Group stage but could not replicate the same in the Super Four stage.