“One of the things I had stressed on was the ability to rotate the strike. It takes a lot of pressure off you. I talked about it a lot to the players,” said Dravid here today on the eve of the team’s departure.
“All these boys can play big shots. They are in a generation where they are practising playing the big shots and some of the sixes they hit boggle the mind.
“We had played on very good wickets over the last couple of months. But you may not get wickets where you can score 300 plus. There will be 240-250 plus wickets. They have learnt to rotate the strike but they can always get better and improve,” the legendary batsman noted.
The 16-team Under 19 World Cup starts on January 27 and India is in Group D along side New Zealand, Ireland and Nepal.
Top two in each of the four groups will go to the quarter-finals.
Dravid was satisfied with the preparations of the squad going into the tournament, which India won thrice (2000 in Sri Lanka, 2008 in Malaysia and 2012 in Australia).
“We have got good preparations over the last two months and played some good games in Mumbai. For a lot of these players it started in October in the domestic one-day cricket.
Then we played a tournament in Kolkata with Afghanistan and Bangladesh U-19 squads. The squad was whittled down to 18 and it was then taken to Sri Lanka.
“The biggest challenge and the hardest thing for me and the selectors was to bring down the number of players from 36 to 15. Everyone is talented. That’s why we rotated the squad,” said Dravid.
Asked why Ishan Kishan, a wicketkeeper-batsman from Jharkhand, was made the captain, Dravid said, “It seems captains from Jharkhand seem to do well. It’s just a joke.
PTI