'West Indies series loss has shown us…': Rahul Dravid points out India's 'major concern' ahead of Asia Cup, World Cup

During Virat Kohli's white-ball captaincy tenure, the period between 2017 and and October 2021, India had an 80 per cent success rate in competitions across ODIs and T20Is which comprised bilateral series and multi-nation events. Following the forgettable end to Kohli's reign in the 2021 T20 World Cup, where India incurred a shocking group-stage exit, the performance of the Men in Blue took a nosedive in limited-over formats. Across 27 contests played since then, India have managed a 68 per cent winning record. The period saw India failing to make the T20 Asia Cup final before losing in the 2022 T20 World Cup semis, while also scripting horror defeats in tour of Bangladesh (ODI) and West Indies (T20I). As India now proceed towards the Asia Cup in September, followed by the ODI World Cup at home, head coach Rahul Dravid, in the wake of the dreadful T20I series loss against West Indies, highlighted some "major concerns" for the team.

While the criticism surrounding the team selection had taken a backseat after India managed to level the series from 0-2 down, with most hoping that they could pull of a historic win even amid the shortcomings, the issue came back haunting the team as they put on yet another horror batting show on Sunday.

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India went in with four No.11s throughout the series against West Indies. While captain Hardik Pandya remained unfazed over it after India's loss in the second T20I, urging his top order to step up, Dravid admitted that their hands were tied owing to the dearth of options in the squad. He further added that the series loss against a team like West Indies where a player like Alzarri Joseph steps in at No.11 showed the importance of batting depth in limited-overs cricket.

"I think in terms of our squad here, probably it didn't allow us the flexibility in some ways to be able to change the combinations a little bit," he said in the post-match press conference. "But I think going forward, we've got to look at certain areas in which we can get better. Finding depth in our batting has been an area we are trying to address. We are trying to do the best we possibly can but that's certainly an area we can look at, how we cannot weaken our bowling attack but ensure we have a certain amount of depth in batting.

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"As these games are going on, and scores are becoming bigger and bigger, if you look at West Indies, they had Alzarri Joseph coming in at No. 11 and he can hit a mean ball. So you have sides which have that depth. Obviously, we have some challenges on that front and we need to work on that. It's certainly something that this series has shown us and we need to build on that depth."

India's next assignment will be a three-match T20I series in Ireland between August 18 and 23 where some of the big names including Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Hardik won't be present. In fact, even Dravid won't be present to guide the Jasprit Bumrah-led new-look India side which will only have 5 players from the recently-concluded T20I series against West Indies.