India batting coach Vikaram Rathour is of the opinion that the Indian Premier League is a great platform that provided the Indian players ahead of the World Cup an excellent opportunity to compete against the best in the world and hence blaming it would be of no good.
"IPL does provide you with the platform where you play against or compete against top cricketers all around the world. So, definitely, it is a good platform to practice, so I don't see any issue there,” Rathour said in the pre-match conference ahead of India’s game against Afghanistan.
“With us getting into World Cup after playing IPL, the players got lots of games. They had to work on their game, but whether that worked... what happened in the past two games is that we were not really able to execute our plans the way we wanted to and that has been our issue and not the preparation,” he added.
Talking about the decision to bat Ishan Kishan at the opening position, Rathour revealed that Rohit Sharma, whose position Kishan took in the game against New Zealand, was very much a part of the management group that took the decision.
“Ishan has done really well as an opener in IPL and in the past for the Indian team as well. And about who takes the call - it was the whole management who sits together and takes this call and of course, Rohit is part of that group.
Tactically [decision] made sense having a left-hander upfront because we didn't want too many left-handers in the late middle order with Ishan, Pant and Jadeja,” Rathour, the batting coach, who has reapplied for the same position after his contract ends post the T20 World Cup said.
Rathour, a former India player himself further said that tacking the Afghan spinners will be a major challenge.
“The challenge will be their spinners. If we can bat to our potential, we have a tremendous and skilful set of players with us, who have done well in the past. If we play to our potential, I think we should be able to do well,” he said.
After having lost two back to back games, India are now at the mercy of other results and big wins in their own games to get them through to the semi-finals.