ICC World Cup 2023: Would love to see one-day format thrive and do well, Dravid

When the 2011 Menrsquos ODI World Cup happened there was huge excitement about the twists and turns happening in a oneday game culminating in MS Dhoni slamming the most unforgettable six in the history of the format for making India win the trophy in MumbaiBut 12 years down the line the oneday format finds itself on a sticky wicket The T20 format then still in its infancy days has now become the ruler of minds of cricket enthusiasts mostly amongst youngsters mainly through its proliferation in franchise leaguesAlso ReadIN PHOTOS Relive the top 5 moments of World Cup 2011Though the 2023 Menrsquos ODI World Cup is up and running in India the lack of spectators in the opener between England and New Zealand at Ahmedabad has set off a fresh debate over the future of the format Rahul Dravid the India head coach with 344 ODI caps wishes to see the format thrive and do well even if its future looks tenseldquoWe havenrsquot played a lot of 50overs cricket in the last bit which is something I have noticed in the couple of years I have been in coaching the team One I feel is that there were two T20 World Cups that happened backtoback and therersquos always a World Test Championship at the back of everything you are doing itrsquos just a constant cycle of whatever you are doingrdquoldquoCanrsquot exactly say but maybe because of Covid19 it has just felt like we havenrsquot played a lot of oneday cricket yet Even when we played oneday cricket we kind of prioritized other things and for managing as well as protecting our players maybe we have used this formatrdquo said Dravid in a press conference at MA Chidambaram Stadium on FridayHe also gave the example of fastbowler Mohammed Sirajs terrific sevenover spell of 621 in the Asia Cup final against Sri Lanka and eloquently said on how ODIs made watching that performance possible as well as of Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra smashing centuries in New Zealandrsquos opening win of the World Cup over EnglandldquoGoing forward itrsquos a really important format as itrsquos a fantastic format to play How much of it to be played will be decided by a variety of factors and with more T20 matches being added to the calendar it will make it difficult to potentially have a number of oneday games that you probably have had between 201519 cyclerdquoldquoWe canrsquot go back to those days but we can sincerely hope that we still keep valuing and playing this format Like the Siraj spell in Asia Cup final ndash that was six overs of topclass bowling Itrsquos something you would never see in a T20 game and on a good day he could have bowled maybe three overs not more than thatrdquoldquoBut here you got to see a full gamut of his skills and abilities which I think oneday cricket allows you to do that ndash it allows you to see really good spells and watch really good innings like the ones from those two lefthanders Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra It allows you to see good spin rotation of strike and creativity as well As a coach and someone who loves game of cricket I would love to see this format thrive and do wellrdquoWith India set to travel a whopping 8400 km in 34 days of playing league stage matches Dravid chose to see the bright side of it instead of viewing it as a source of exhaustion ldquoWhen you were asking this I was thinking from inside that how much exciting it is to travel to nine cities and hopefully for eleven cities in the knockoutsrdquoldquoPlaying in front of our home crowd and showing them our skillsets I see this as a very exciting opportunity to play in the competition Like many fans have some of our players as their favourites and seeing them in action in person in various cities is a chance to spread a festival of happinessrdquo