We responded back like a champion team – Rahul Dravid after India’s thrilling win

India’s head coach Rahul Dravid stated that the team responded back like a champion team after they had their backs against the wall in the second ODI against Sri Lanka.

India was struggling at 193-7 while chasing a target of 276 runs when Deepak Chahar and Bhuvneshwar Kumar joined forces with each other.

Chahar played a magnificent knock of unbeaten 69 runs to take the team over the line. Chahar and Bhuvneshwar added a partnership of 84 runs to help their team win by three wickets.

Rahul Dravid, who is well known to get the best out of the young players, lauded the collective effort of the team. Apart from Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Deepak Chahar, Suryakumar Yadav played a fine knock as he scored his maiden ODI fifty.

However, a lot of credit should be given to Deepak Chahar who got the team out of the woods as he took the match deep and finished off the game.

“We finished on the right side of the result which is amazing but even if we hadn’t, the fight that we showed was brilliant so well done to all of you. It is not the time to talk about individual names. Obviously, there have been some fantastic individual performances, but we will talk about that in our meetings. But I think when you look at the whole game it was a really good team performance,” said Dravid in a video posted on the BCCI Twitter handle.

“We said they were going to respond, we knew we had to respect them, they are also an international team. They responded, and we responded back like a champion team. With our backs to the wall, we found a way to win, really well done to all of you,” he said.

Dravid has done a fine job and he has been an inspiration for the young players, who are rising through the ranks. There were a lot of positives for the Indian team as their lower order was able to deliver the goods. The visitors had come up with a clinical performance in the first ODI but they had to sweat hard for their second win and thus there were good lessons for them.

The third ODI will be played on Friday at the same venue.