India vs Australia: Whenever Team India was troubled someone put their hand up and got us through- R Sridhar
India fielding coach R Sridhar feels that the speciality of this team was the fact that every time the going seemed to get tough, there was someone who put their hand up and delivered for the team.
In Short
- Mohammed Siraj was the highest wicket-taker for India with 13 dismissals in 3 Tests
- Rishabh Pant top scored for India in the series with 274 runs in 3 matches
- Cheteshwar Pujara had 271 runs while Ajinkya Rahane had 268 runs in 4 Tests
Team India has been hailed across the world for its historic win in Australia and India fielding coach R Sridhar feels that the speciality of this team was the fact that every time the going seemed to get tough, there was someone or the other who put their hand up and delivered for the team.
Former cricketers such as Sunil Gavaskar and Ricky Ponting have lauded the young team for the way they fought in the series after a loss at Adelaide and delivered with several key players injured and therefore not available to play.
“What I feel was different in this tour was that everyone put their hand up. The highest wicket-taker had 13 wickets and the highest run-getter was 274. But the next highest wicket-taker was 12 and the next was 11. So, if you see, we worked as a unit.
“274 was the highest runs, 271 was the next and 260 something after that, so they were all clustered together. So, everybody put their hand up.
“Every time we were in a spot of bother one guy put his hand up and said ‘I will pick the team up’. So, everybody had their time under the sun and everybody utilised opportunities, and it was great to see,” said Sridhar on Sports Today.
Preparations for Australia started very early, says Sridhar
When asked what was it about this team that was different from the players in the previous tours to Australia, Sridhar said that the preparations for the tour began a lot in advance.
“It is a very difficult question to answer, what was different (about the team), I would say, the preparation started well and early because during lockdown we knew that if we get a series it will be this series.
“So the mental preparation started a lot early although the physical preparations were severely severely affected. In terms of the conditioning and all, that was affected.
“We had enough time to prepare mentally and game plan wise, even before the boys went to IPL they knew what they had to do in Dubai to prepare themselves for the tour,” he added.