Team India’s head coach Rahul Dravid expects the fanfare around the ongoing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup to go several notches up once India kick off their campaign against Ireland at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium on June 5 (8 PM IST).
“Yeah, obviously it’s slightly different. It’s obviously exciting that it’s coming to a new country, it’s coming to a new place. (It) feels slightly different in terms of, I guess, typically the buzz that you have around these events, with cricket not being one of the major sports in this country. So you don’t feel that kind of buzz over here. But hopefully, once our games start and a lot of the Indian fans do start coming in, you start seeing that similar kind of excitement,” Dravid was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
Dravid mentioned that though India are new to the conditions and are in unfamiliar territory, it hasn’t influenced their preparation.
“So things are certainly different from that perspective. But yeah, I think from a preparation perspective and from what we want to get out of it, I don’t think that’s changed, our preparation, our professionalism, the way we are trying to approach things. It’s pretty, pretty similar to what we would normally do,” he added.
Dravid looked in a jovial mood and cracked a joke about practising in a park (Eisenhower Park) in a tournament as big as the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
“It’s a bit strange to be practicing in a park. Obviously at the World Cups you’d be in big stadiums or you’d be at cricket stadiums traditionally. But you know, we’re at a public park and practicing,” he mentioned.
India squad:
Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj
Reserves:
Shubman Gill, Rinku Singh, Khaleel Ahmed and Avesh Khan