India head coach Rahul Dravid has rued injuries to KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer. Addressing a press conference ahead of the Asia Cup from Bengaluru, Dravid said that India were clear 18 months ago who was going to bat at No. 4 and No. 5, but injuries to key players disturbed their plans.

The Indian team has been criticised for their experimentation with their middle order in the West Indies ODI series. Dravid hit back at the critics and said that it is not that India did not know what they were doing, but needed to try specific players in specific conditions ahead of the World Cup 2023.

“This word experimentation keeps getting thrown around a lot, without actually being thought through. We are not experimenting for the sake of experimenting. Sometimes there are specific reasons why you have to experiment. Just to give you an example – the No. 4 and 5 spots got discussed a lot. There is an impression that we do not have clarity on who is going to be there. I could have told you 18 months ago who is going to play at No. 4 and 5 slots. It was always going to be between KL, Shreyas and Rishabh. There was no doubt in our minds,” Dravid said in the press conference in Bengaluru.

Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer were injured within four months of each other. Pant fell in a life-threatening car accident late in December 2022, while Iyer and KL were ruled out due to injury in March and May respectively. Rahul Dravid reminded that all three players had to go under surgery and that was something that one could not have prepared for.

“All of them had injuries close to each other and what were the odds of that happening? Nobody can calculate for that. All three of them were pushing for that spot had to go under the knife and all three of them had serious injuries,” Dravid said.

The coach clarified that Iyer and Rahul were well prepared and just needed to get game time going into the premier ICC tournament set to be played in October and November in the subcontinent.