India must improve both its batting and bowling during the fourth Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test if it is to win the match and qualify for the World Test Championship final without the assistance of others, according to head coach Radhul Draivd on Tuesday.
India won the first two Tests in Nagpur and New Delhi but lost the third in Indore to trail the series 2-1 heading into the fourth and final match.
"We'll have to work on both batting and bowling (departments). In the Indore Test, 109 runs in the first innings were insufficient. It would have been better if we had scored 60-70 more runs. In that situation and under those conditions, we also gave them a few extra runs in the first inning. So we'll have to improve in both areas of the game "Dravid stated this during a pre-match press conference held here.
When asked how he, as a coach, judges the players' performances on difficult pitches, Dravid said he has to be realistic about what constitutes a good performance on such pitches.
"It's just a matter of being realistic about what constitutes a good performance on some of the more difficult pitches we're playing on. Not just here, but over the last few matches. I mean, if you look at the last three or four years around the world, I think wickets have generally gotten a lot more difficult.
So you just have to be realistic about what the benchmarks and standards are now, and understand that even in these types of games, "He stated.
A great performance can change the game, as we saw with Rohit (Sharma in Nagpur). That's something we've seen a lot around here. So, yeah, I think it's just being realistic in our assessment of our batsmen and their averages and numbers, and we don't put too much stock in it," he added.