The Indian Cricket team suffered criticism when the side experimented with their middle order in the recently concluded India vs West Indies ODI series. With the likes of KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer being out of action due to injuries, the management sent five different players for these two spots in the Windies series. The likes of Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel and Sanju Samson played at No.4, while Ravindra Jadeja, Suryakumar Yadav and Pandya played at five in the three ODIs.
Questions were being raised as the team was changing its batting order in the Windies series with Asia Cup less than a month away. head coach Rahul Dravid had earlier stated that this was the last series where the team could try and test different players at different spots before the continental event. Meanwhile, as the Asia Cup is about to unfold, coach Dravid has opened up on the experimentation approach, saying the team always knew who are the players that will be playing at No.4 and No.5 in big tournaments but they faced problems when their first choice players were injured.
"This word experimentation gets thrown out a lot, without sometimes thought through. It's not that we are trying to experiment with something for the sake of experiment. Sometimes there are specific reasons why you have to do something. There was a lot of talk that we don't have clarity over No.4 and No.5. But I could have told you 18 or 19 months ago about who were the three candidates we were looking at No.4 and 5. It was always between KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant for those spots," Rahul said in a press conference on Tuesday.
"It's unfortunate that all three of them got injured in the space of two months. Nobody can calculate on the odds then. All three who were pushing for these spots suffered serious injuries. So you have to put other people in that position," he added.
