Rahul Dravid lauds individual performances after India's triumph

India v England, Second Test, Scorecard

India rode on the brilliance of Jasprit Bumrah, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill to go level in the five-match ICC World Test Championship series against England at home with a convincing win in Visakhapatnam on Monday, 5 February.

Admitting that India were under pressure in the game in a few situations, Dravid said that the individual performances helped them get the win.

"We were put under pressure at various times, but I think a couple of individual brilliances kept us in the game in the first couple of days," Dravid said at the post-match press conference.

"Yashasvi's brilliant innings, 209 in that first innings. And then Bumrah's spell really on the first two days kept us, or got us ahead by 140. And then, we needed a bit more of a team performance over days three and four to get us over the line."

Dravid, however, commented that India weren't truly dominating the game at any stage and that the team conceded good positions, especially with the bat.

"I don't think we were in any position at any stage in this game to ever think about putting pressure back on the opposition," Dravid says.

"So I think more than that [forcing the play], I think after we lost the first couple of wickets, we soaked the pressure really well to get that partnership, but we couldn't just capitalise on it enough."

"If we had got to tea at 250 for 4 instead of 230 for 6, we were 210 for 4 I think, and you just start getting comfortable and then you lose a couple of wickets and you're thinking, 'oh'."

The head coach also said that, like in Hyderabad, India did not get as many runs as they wanted to.

"At times, people may not be able to convert some of the starts, but for us, for me, it's not so much about, it's just about reading the game and the game situation," the former Indian No.3 said.

India surge up WTC25 standings after victory in Vizag

"I think it's about understanding are we making the right decisions when to put the pressure, or are we recognising that this is a moment where we need to soak in the pressure a little bit and maybe be a little bit more conservative rather than attack all out?

"I do feel that we did leave runs on the board here again."

With the win, India rose up the ICC World Test Championship 2023-25 table to the second position and a win percentage of 52.77%, just behind Australia (55.00%) at No.1.

Meanwhile, Ben Stokes stated that England had full belief in chasing down the target. 

"Coming into this last innings we had full belief in ourselves that we could go and chase that down," Stokes said.

"The way in which we go about taking on challenges like that is what we're about and the number of runs that we needed to get was just sort of another thing for us to try and try and chase down."

"And I thought the way in which we applied ourselves and really tried to put India's bowling attack under a lot of pressure was great. Unfortunately, we didn't end up on the right side of the result. Congrats to India, I thought they played a fantastic game and, again, another great game to be a part of."