While their tour of South Africa will be a litmus test for them as has been repeatedly pointed out by various cricket experts, Sanjay Bangar the batting coach of Team India has said that they are only focussing on the process and not the opposition and will back what has worked for them in the past year.
“It’s a Test match and it’s no different to any other Test match we play wherein the opposition’s skill sets are taken into account,” offered Sanjay Bangar, the assistant coach, on match eve. “But again, what we really focus on is inwards and what our processes are, how our mental approach is, how our mindset is and, in terms of batting rhythm, where we stand. The opposition doesn’t really matter, nor do the conditions. It is basically how we are feeling as a batting group within ourselves that matters. And we work towards achieving that sort of level that we desire.”
“As of now, the conditions that we found, we are expecting that it will seam around a bit on day one. But days two and three are going to be very good batting conditions. We’ll take a call tomorrow morning about the extent of moisture in the surface and we’ll take it from there.”
Bangar said the intensity of the sessions and their length meant the team was well prepared. “We are very, very confident about our preparations because we got four-five days but we made sure we’ve got plenty out of it. All the guys are really in a very, very positive state of mind.”
Bangar concluded his interaction with the media having a word on the bowling potential of the Indian team. He said “We’ve got Ishant Sharma who is having his third tour of South Africa. And all the bowlers have been rotated really well taking into account the workload they are going to encounter here. You can see the consistency they have displayed in the home season, where they have bowled on pretty flat conditions and made sure they gave the support to the spinners on home soil. They’ve built a great sense of discipline in their bowling and I’m pretty sure that discipline will help us in maintaining the pressure on the opposition batsmen.”
