"Quality of warm-up matches is crucial" - Rahul Dravid on India's preparation in England

FILE PHOTO: Rahul Dravid

Team India is scheduled to play five Tests against England for the first time since 1959. Learning from their 2011 debacle, India will be playing 2 practice matches ahead of the five Tests. First of their two warm-up games begins on Thursday which would be a three-day match in Leicester.

Former India skipper Rahul Dravid believes that this England tour will be a good opportunity for the players and hopes that the two-warm up games will be on par with the actual match, something which has been lacking in the previous tours.

Speaking to ESPNcricinfo, Dravid said, "When I first started playing, county or first-class teams would put out their best XIs against international teams. That has changed a lot because towards the end of my career, you would almost see second XIs playing against you and that would bring down the intensity of the competition. I hope that doesn't happen."

In their last tour to England in 2011, India suffered a whitewash despite the presence of seasoned campaigners like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and, of course, skipper MS Dhoni himself where they played just one warm-up match against Somerset before the first Test and a second warm-up game against Northamptonshire after the first two Tests.

However, both practice games have been scheduled ahead of the Test series this year, and not in between the Tests.

Dravid has stressed on the importance of these practice matches, as "a lot of India's young players haven't been on a full tour to England before and haven't played a lot of Test cricket for a while now. So just to get into the groove of things, for the bowlers to bowl some long spells, get that 20-over workload in a day, for a batsman to spend a couple of sessions, it will be a really useful exercise," he reasoned.

The Indian batting legend said batsmen including the likes of Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane and Shikhar Dhawan will be keen to make it count in the difficult English conditions after a decent show by them overseas lately.

The 164-Test veteran said it is easy to bat in those conditions if you get into form a bit early. “It's just nice to get used to the conditions, [For] someone like an Ishant Sharma, who's played a few IPL games but hasn't played a lot other than that, it will be nice for him to have one or two long bowls in these games," he said.

For the first time ever India has named an 18-man squad for the tour, which might be an insurmountable task for the management to give every player some time before the Tests. Dravid chortled at the thought of "fitting 18 guys into a very small dressing room at Leicester!" but said the management would look to try "different combinations" in the two games.

"There are two ways they can go, which is bowling three seamers and one spinner in one combination and actually going with two seamers and two spinners in another. Maybe two games give them the opportunity to try out both combinations and see which is the good one," Dravid predicted.

"You generally know nine of your players, so you generally like to give them as much batting time as possible. You can rotate the bowlers a little bit more, the batsmen like to bat a lot before a series starts," Dravid spoke about the tactic batsmen like Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Gautam Gambhir, Murali Vijay and MS Dhoni who will be keen to get some invaluable match practice ahead of the Tests having been away from competitive cricket since the IPL.

Having toured England four times and enjoyed a great amount of success scoring back to back centuries there, Dravid said the tour games could "really get you into the tour". "I really enjoyed them, because they are nice small cities and towns where you really get to chill out and relax at the end of the day. I really looked forward to some of these games."

"They are (warm-up games) important, it doesn't guarantee you success in the Test matches or the other way around if you don't do well in these games," he cautioned.