New Delhi, Aug 25 (IANS) With India taking a strong position in the second Test against Sri Lanka and set to play seven more games in the next few months, former India captain Rahul Dravid believes the team can qualify for the World Test Championship (WTC) final from this stage.

India had registered a 165-run win over Sri Lanka in the first Test at Galle; the Shubman Gill-led Indian team has improved their points percentage to 53.33 percent from 48.14 percent to maintain their fifth spot in the WTC standings.

With India set to play seven more Tests, including five Test matches at home against Australia in this WTC cycle, Dravid believes that India are in a strong position in the WTC.

“I’m hoping they do. It’ll be a great run if India can qualify for the WTC final from here. They’ve fallen behind a little bit, but the kind of quality that the Indian team has, you’re not going to write them off at any stage. They started well against Sri Lanka, so that’s a good first step,” Dravid told JioHotstar.

India will tour New Zealand in November to play two Test matches later this year in November under this WTC cycle. India have lost the Test series the last time they played in New Zealand, 2-0. Because of that result, Dravid believes facing New Zealand is always a challenge and that it will be a big challenge for the current Indian Test team.

“(Playing against) New Zealand away is always a challenge. (They are a) tough team to play away from home. A lot of the young Indian boys have not played in those conditions, so that’s going to be a big challenge. Hopefully, they can keep the guys fit and not have a lot of injuries over the next few months. We’re missing the experience of Virat (Kohli) and Rohit (Sharma), Ajinkya Rahane and (Cheteshwar) Pujara, these kinds of guys who’ve probably been there the last time India went. So that will be an interesting series as well,” Dravid added.

India will then host Australia in the five Test matches of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy starting January next year, and Dravid also shared how the current Australia team would be eager to win the series in India.

“Australia will be really exciting. A lot of their players will be very keen to do well in India. That’s a generation of truly great Australian players, a great Australian team that has not won in India. So they’ll be keen to do that,” said Dravid.

–IANS

bsk/