Rahul Dravid Against Quotations

He was the unsung hero in the one-day series against South Africa and Sri Lanka (in India late last year). Hopefully, he will enjoy the challenge here and bowl well.

He has strained his hamstring and we are worried about his availability for the home series against England.

It is natural that if you play too much against one country people tend to lost interest.

It is natural that if you play too much against one country people tend to lose interest. The two boards I think are working on a solution which would be good for cricket in both countries.

Sri Lanka was higher than us, so was South Africa and now Pakistan was number two. So we have played well against teams higher than us.

We played him in the middle order against South Africa with some success. We have a lot of options, but we will see as the series progresses.

We discussed him in our bowler's meeting last evening. Some of the guys who have played against him in county cricket think he is a very good player.

We have discussed a lot of options and he did come lower down the order for us against South Africa and got some runs. That's something we have considered and we have thought about it as well, but at the moment we want to give him some more opportunities. When he gets firing, he is very destructive and fetches good runs for the team, something he has done for us in the past, quite often.

England had shown in the Ashes series against Australia that if you play five bowlers, you can win some very good matches.

Also, in conditions like this, it can get very tough on the bowlers. We felt we needed five bowlers to keep them fresh and motivated, considering the long season ahead. We wanted to spread the workload ahead and guard against burn-out.

It?s the normal pressure or anxiety to perform well which is good. We know Pakistan?s recent performance against us has been good. But statistics don?t count much as in one-day cricket the team that performs well on that day will win.

They can be devastating against any bowling on their day. We have to accept that and respect that.

Against good teams (like Pakistan), when you put yourself under pressure you discover lot of things like how you are growing as a team and I think we are heading in good direction.

Against a good quality seam attack not only us, anyone could have faced a problem. Asif hit the seam on the deck regularly at the right line and I have no doubt his bowling in both innings made the difference.

In my opinion, and in the opinion of the umpires and match referee, both of whom I have spoken to, the Indian team did not get in any manner that was unsportsmanlike or against the spirit of the game. If that had been the case the umpires and the match referee would have taken action.

Hopefully, we will carry forward the confidence of this series against England after a few days off.