Addressing a press conference ahead of India’s Super Four clash against Pakistan, Dravid acknowledged that the squad he has at his disposal isn’t necessarily the “same squad that would go to the World Cup” but that doesn’t imply that India’s preparations will have to wait. “There’s not going to be any workload management over the next three or four days, unless of course it’s forced upon us like, for example, Jadeja,” Dravid said.

“Other than that, we’re looking at every single game to win it, try and win this tournament and do the best that we can. We’ll have time after that to manage the workloads. From now on leading into the World Cup, we want to be playing our best squad as and when possible.” Missing big players aside, Dravid also spoke on Virat Kohli, who’s been under a bit of pressure to score runs before the selectors get together to pick the World Cup squad.

“Especially with Virat, people get a little bit obsessed with his statistics and his numbers and his things,” Dravid said. “For us, it’s not really about that. It’s just about the contributions you can make in different phases in a game and what the contribution is. It doesn’t have to be in the 50s or 100s or a stat for us. Even small contributions mean a lot in Twenty20 cricket, and for our team what is the role required and what does the team need? Virat is pretty keen on really putting in big performances. So yeah, I’m really glad he’s playing well, and hopefully, he can keep doing that for the rest of the tournament.”

“It’s nice to see that he’s come back fresh and he’s looking forward to playing every game. Not that he wasn’t looking forward to playing – sometimes with Virat I think he’s just he’s just one of those guys who’s always on. So, you know, it’s not that earlier he was not, but it’s just nice, I’m glad he’s had the opportunity to break and just come back refreshed and relaxed. It’s good he’s got a chance to bat in the middle and play a couple of games where he’s got time to spend in the middle. And hopefully from here on in he can kick on and have a really good tournament. For us, it’s not really about looking at how many runs he makes.”

Dravid said that he was happy that the top three have bought into the team’s positive approach, something he feels is essential for “per plus” totals in T20s. “I think everyone has bought into it. We’ve talked about playing positive cricket and also being smart as well as positive. I think sometimes you’ve got to also ensure that…,” Dravid said. “It’s about ensuring that you sort of getting par plus scores, depending on what the par is on that particular wicket and in those conditions. I think that’s important. We don’t want to be the team that falls below par in a particular game. That par can change. On a wicket that’s very flat and has small boundaries, the par might be 200. On some other wicket, the par might be 150.”

“We’ve seen some pretty challenging wickets in this tournament. Probably, you know, it’s not 200-run games that’s par in these tournaments. Whatever the conditions that we are faced with in front of us, we always want to ensure that we are par or par plus. Ideally par plus. You always want to be batting first, you want to be par plus of course. When you’re chasing a score that’s in front of you concerning whatever the team sets for you, so you want to be par plus, and honestly, the guys have bought into it. Everyone’s very keen to try and go about that and achieve that. It’s not always that you’re going to be able to succeed but certainly, we are looking to be positive and certainly play the kind of cricket that T20 cricket demands today.”