India pacer Deepak Chahar, who was an unexpected hero with the bat in the second ODI against Sri Lanka, said coach Rahul Dravid’s belief in his batting inspired him to produce a match-winning knock for his team.
“No better way to win the match for the country. Rahul sir told me to play all the balls. I’ve played a few innings with India A (when Dravid was coach) and I think he has belief in me.
“He told me he thinks I’m good enough to be a No 7 (but he batted at 8). He has belief in me. Hopefully in the coming matches I don’t have to bat. When we came under 50 that’s when I believed we can win. Before that it was ball by ball. I took some risks after,” said Chahar at the post match presentation.
Prior to this game, his highest scored in international cricket was 12.
“Only one thing that was going on in my mind: this is the kind of innings I’ve been dreaming of. No better way to win the match for the country,” he said talking about his mindset in the middle.
‘justified promotion’
India vice-captain Bhuvneshwar Kumar said it was coach Rahul Dravid’s decision to send Deepak Chahar up the order and he justified it with an “amazing” knock.
“...Our aim was to play till the last ball, last over, so we wanted to take it as deep as possible, so we can score runs. The only plan was to play till the last, and the way Deepak batted was amazing,” Bhuvneshwar said at the post-match virtual press conference.
“He has played under coach Rahul Dravid before in India A or some series and he had scored there as well. So, Dravid knew that he can bat and he can hit a few balls, so that was his Dravid’s call.
“And the way he batted, Chahar proved it right. We all know that he can bat, he has batted in Ranji Trophy many times, so it wasn’t a tough call but it is good to see the way he scored the runs.”
“The only chat and plan was to play till the end. We never said to each other that from here on, we can win. Even when we needed 1 run (3 runs), we were taking one ball at a time. Deepak never let the run rate go above six,” Bhuvneshwar said.
“He almost played risk-free shots, where he got few boundaries and brought the required rate to under six. At no stage did we think that we are going to win or lose. We were playing according to the situation and taking it ball by ball.” PTI