India batting coach Vikram Rathour is confident that the Indian cricket team will get a “settled team” for the forthcoming ICC T20 World Cup 2021 by the time the upcoming T20I series against England is over.
The upcoming five-match T20I series starting March 12 (Friday) at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad will serve as preparation for the T20 World Cup 2021 for both India and England.
However, the batting coach is already aware that Team India has a “pretty settled unit” as he has a rough idea who is going to play in the T20 World Cup 2021 later this year but hopes to get the T20 World Cup squad at the end of the upcoming five-match T20I series against England at home.
With India hosting the 2021 T20 World Cup in October-November this year, Rathour wants the batting unit to get settled basically at the end of the upcoming five-match T20I series against England.
As reported by ESPNcricinfo, Rathour said: “The T20 World Cup is in India, so I just want the batting unit to get settled basically. By the time we finish this series, we should know (that) this is the team that is going to play the World Cup. So hopefully that will happen in this series.”
He further added, “I am already sure that there wouldn't be too many changes anyway because we are a pretty settled unit at the moment. But in case somebody loses form or somebody gets injured, as a batting unit you just want to get settled now.”
The batting coach also said he isn’t focused on the Indian batsmen's strike rates as long as they could adapt to situations and roles and wins the game in T20 cricket.
Rathour further explained, “You are looking to win a game. If you are chasing, strike rate doesn't mean anything actually. You are looking to finish a game and chase a target - whether you do it in 10 overs or 20 overs, you are looking to win the game. Batting first, at times, yeah. If the conditions are good, you need to be looking to put a par score on board.”
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He signed off by saying, “As far as our T20 (batting) is concerned, we have been doing that pretty consistently. So I'm not really, really concerned; I mean as far as we are winning games and we are putting par scores and chasing targets, I'm okay with whatever strike rates they are going at.”
India's T20I squad for England series:
Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma (VC), KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Yuzvendra Chahal, Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Rahul Tewatia, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur.
(With ANI Inputs)
