After a few Indian players turned up for the optional training session at the Optus Stadium here on Saturday, batting coach Vikram Rathour walked into the press-conference hall located at the venue’s basement. Ahead of India’s Sunday night ICC T20 World Cup game against South Africa, questions centred on pace, the surface and the playing eleven.
Rathour offered a straight bat while also offering some quick counters. One such was centred around K.L. Rahul’s meagre returns and whether that might create a berth for Rishabh Pant, and immediately Rathour said: “We are not really thinking about that. Two games, I don’t think that’s a good enough sample size. He has been batting really well and he has batted well in the practice games, so we are not looking at any such thing at the moment.”
Talking about Virat Kohli’s return to runs, the batting coach said: “He is a good enough player to adapt his game to whatever the team requires, and he has done that brilliantly, and we know that he will carry on doing that.”
Later he added: “I don’t think these are 200, 200-plus wickets, so we will need to adapt, and we have done pretty well in that regard.”
Earlier South African speedster Anrich Nortje banked on the bowling unit to strike on a surface that according to him had “lots of pace and bounce.” He also declared: “We see ourselves as one of the best pace attacks and we are definitely going to back ourselves. We have a great variety.”
Factoring in the rain-threat, Nortje mentioned: “There is a possibility of other games getting rained out, of may be this and that happening, and then we could go through. Or we can just try and win all our games and make it simple.”
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