India Under-19 coach Rahul Dravid, who has been more than a father figure to the young cricketers, expressed his disappointment following his charges’ five-wicket loss to the West Indies in the grand finale of the World Cup at Mirpur’s Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium yesterday.
Dravid however, believes this is just the start of a journey for the young cricketers and wishes to see them flourish in mainstream cricket.
“I am disappointed for them. It’s tough for a lot of these young kids but it’s hopefully a start of the journey for them. Every experience is a learning curve. We’ve tasted a lot of success as a team, it’s only the first match we’ve lost (in the tournament) and unfortunately for us it was the biggest game. But, there’s a learning process in everything,” Dravid told the media after the game.
“I think in their long journeys as cricketers they are going to face a lot of ups and downs, see a lot of success, hopefully face disappointments as well. This is a learning step. Hopefully we can learn from it. If we can learn some lessons from it and if they can go on to become better cricketers and better people, that’s really the purpose of the tournament,” he added.
The former India cricketer credited the West Indies bowlers for restricting the India batsmen from putting up a big total. India were sent in to bat first after losing the toss and a post top-order debacle saw the side post only 145 runs on the board before being dismissed.
“I’d like to give credit to the West Indian bowlers. They bowled really well. They bowled really good line and lengths. They maintained the pressure right through the game. At no stage, it really felt like they were giving us easy balls to hit,” he said before adding, “When we look back at the game, we probably could have batted much better in the beginning. There were a few soft dismissals, there was carelessness. But really proud of the way the boys came back and fought.”