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Head coach Rahul Dravid hailed India's middle order for producing exceptional performance throughout the world cup and talked about the importance of their performance in such a tournament.
India's middle order wasn't tested much with the likes of skipper Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli providing an ideal start for the majority of the tournament. During India's clash against Australia, England and New Zealand the likes of Suryakuamr Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja and KL Rahul came to India's rescue and clinch victory. Even though the statistics don't back India's middle-order performance KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja and Shreyas Iyer have combined to score 595 runs throughout the tournament, Dravid emphasized on importance of those knocks. "Yeah, it's terrific. I mean, I think again, I answered this question if I remember in Chennai. And I said that, middle orders in one-day cricket, somebody asked me about and I said middle orders are going to be very, very important in a tournament like this. You know, they're going to, how well your middle order performs in sometimes very tricky conditions and challenging situations under pressure, is actually going to probably decide how well you do. While our top orders also performed exceptionally well. I think our middle orders played very critical roles. Sometimes you can't judge them by sheer numbers. It's obvious that when you look at a leaderboard of scores and runs, it'll always be someone in the top three. I mean, it's pretty obvious," Dravid said. "You look at that whole board and It's all filled with guys from any country who are in the top three. So that only gives you one half of the picture, but it's actually some of those 30s, 40s, critical knocks. I can look back on this whole campaign and look at the contributions of our middle order and they'll come only in sort of spurts, or one knock here, or two knocks there, and somebody done something there, or a Shreyas, or a KL, or a Surya's knock here, and Jaddu's important knock in Dharamshala. And you can look at a lot of these small, small things, and actually that's what really gives you those ticks, or gives you those wins at the end of the day. So, it's a combination of things. And touchwood, our mid-lord has been truly exceptional in this tournament," Dravid added. India will look to end the group stage unbeaten as they face the Netherlands on Sunday at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. (ANI)
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