T20 World Cup 2024 | "It's tough to leave anyone out": Rahul Dravid

Rahul Dravid (Pic: File Pic)

Team India head coach Rahul Dravid opened up on keeping star spinner Kuldeep Yadav out of playing XI so far in the T20 World Cup 2024.

Kuldeep debuted in 2017 and since then has played 35 T20Is in which he registered 59 wickets to his name with an economy rate of 6.75. However, he failed to make a cut in India's playing XI of the T20 World Cup 2024.

Team India will lock horns with Afghanistan for their upcoming Super 8 match of the T20 World Cup 2024 at the Kingston Oval in Barbados.

Dravid said that all four benched players were quality performers. Further, he said that they selected the playing XI based on the conditions.

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"It's tough to leave anyone out. All the four guys that we left out in those games, to be honest, are all quality players, quality performers. Any one of them actually coming into your squad, if you were to look at it, man for man will not make your squad a weaker squad. It's just that the conditions and what we felt was the requirement in that particular venue made us go with that particular combination where we felt that there wasn't a huge role for spin and it was more a pace bowlers kind of conditions," Dravid said.

Dravid lavished praises on Afghanistan's bowling attack and said that are experienced bowlers.

"It is important for us to recognise that they have a good bowling attack all round. Even their two pacers are quite experienced, whether it's Farooqi and Naveen Ul Haq have both played a lot of cricket, they both swing the ball as well. So, they've got a pretty good bowling attack, there's no doubt about it. I think their bowlers are some of the most sought-after bowlers in this format across the world in different leagues," he added.

India will be aiming to do well against Afghanistan (June 20), Bangladesh (June 22) and Australia (24) and register big wins to qualify for the semifinals and end India's drought for an ICC trophy since 2013's Champions Trophy and also win their first T20 WC since 2007's inaugural edition in South Africa.

The "Men in Blue" displayed an outstanding show in the T20 World Cup 2024 group stage and finished at the top spot of Group A.

India T20 World Cup 2024 squad: Rohit Sharma (C), Hardik Pandya, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj.

(With ANI Inputs)