India head coach Rahul Dravid on Monday (February 5) made it clear that the team management doesn't specifically request rank turners for home matches.

His comment came after former skipper Sourav Ganguly recently said that the Indian team, possessing a well-balanced bowling attack, doesn't necessarily need to play on rank turners.

During the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia and the series against England in 2021, Test matches were played on turning tracks, resulting in most games finishing within three days.

However, the first two Tests in the ongoing series against England have extended to four days. While the Hyderabad pitch for the series opener was a slow turner, the surface for the second Test in Vizag remained relatively flat for the majority of the match.

According to Dravid, it is challenging to predict how a pitch would behave over the five days of a Test match.

When questioned about the chances of getting more pitches similar to Vizag in the future, the Indian coach expressed uncertainty, citing that he is not privy to such information.

"Curators make the pitches. We don't ask for rank turners. Obviously tracks in India would spin, how much they'll spin, how less they'll spin, how much. I'm not an expert, obviously, wickets in India in the course of four or five days, they do turn but how much they're going to turn.

"I sometimes get told they'll turn on the third day, but they turn on the first day. Sometimes I get told they'll turn on the second day and they don't turn till day four," Dravid said in a press conference after India’s 106-run victory over England in the Vizag Test.

"So I'm sometimes as clueless as anybody else. We look at the wicket and we try and do the best we can on what we get. We go to Rajkot, we'll see what we can get and play with whatever we get in front of."

Indian batters have received flak for throwing away their starts in the series. Only Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill played big knocks in Vizag while others failed to make the most of their starts.

Dravid acknowledged that the hosts could have scored more runs in both the innings and he expects more consistency from the younger crop.

"If I'm being honest, I think we left a few runs on the board in both the innings. Again, I think, that's maybe a function of the fact that we do have a lot of young batsmen coming through, I think still figuring out Test cricket a little bit, but you don't have a lot of time to figure out Test cricket.

"Certainly in the first innings, 396, I thought, was underpowered, we left 75 on the board. You win a toss, you have one guy who gets a double hundred. You should be pushing 475-450 in these conditions.

"And then in the second innings, maybe after losing a couple of wickets, 250 was probably about par. So, it's a work in progress. We'll hopefully get a little bit better and we'll keep improving," said the coach.

Dravid praised England's aggressive brand of cricket in the ongoing series and said that he always expected it to be a tough series. The five-match series is currently levelled at 1-1 and both the teams will now move to Rajkot for the third Test, slated to start on February 15.

"They (England) are playing very well. Whether you call it bazball or whatever you call it. I'm not sure how happy they are about it, but they are playing really good cricket. Let's be honest, they played well, they've shown good skills. it's not like wild slogging," said Dravid.

"They are actually showing some very good skills. Some of the shots they are playing require a lot of skill and ability. You can't just come there and execute those things and just say, well, I want to play attackingly and not have the skills to execute it.

"So, I think there's more to it than just attacking cricket. I've seen at times they know when to pull back, when to attack. So they're playing slightly differently, no doubt about it, but they've been very successful and they're playing it well. We know we're up against the challenge and we're looking forward to it," he further remarked.

On Virat Kohli's availability for the Rajkot Test, Dravid left that on to the selectors. The star batter pulled out of the first two games due to personal reasons.

"It's best to ask for selectors once the team will be selected for the next three games. I'm sure they're the best people to answer that."

(With PTI Inputs)