India coach Rahul Dravid gave an apt reply to Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan calling the Men in Blue favorites to win their upcoming encounter in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2022 which will be played in Adelaide on November 2, 2022.
Bangladesh has a good chance to make it into the semis, but they have to not only beat India but Pakistan as well in their last two Group 2 Super 12s matches. Shakib, without hesitation, admitted that Bangladesh is not here to win the World Cup.
In the pre-match press conference, Shakib said that if Bangladesh manage to beat the Men in Blue on Wednesday, it would be an "upset". Bangladesh has never beaten India in T20 World Cup. And in 11 T20I meetings overall, Bangladesh has managed to beat India only once, in 2019, in Delhi.
He said: "We haven’t come here to win the World Cup, but India have. If we win tomorrow, it will be an upset victory. India are favorites tomorrow."
India coach Rahul Dravid face the press on Tuesday and was asked about Shakib’s remark and said that India will not head into the contest as “favorites”, citing Ireland's win over England earlier in this tournament.
"I think we respect them a lot. I think they're a very good team. I think this format and this World Cup has really shown us that honestly you can't take any team lightly. Ireland showed that against England. We've seen enough games in this competition.
I think the fact that it is already such a short format. 20 overs is such a short format of the game. The margins of victory and defeat sometimes even if they're 12 runs, 15 runs, it's actually just two hits. It's two hits one way or the other, and actually that's the game. So it is already a shortened sort of rushed, noisy format, but it's very difficult to sometimes say who's a clear favourite in some of these games," he said.
(Star Sports inputs)
