Disheartened Team India, who have been eliminated from the ongoing Asia Cup 2022, will aim to end the tournament on a high with a victory against Afghanistan in the Super 4 clash on Thursday in Dubai. Pakistan’s thrilling one-wicket victory against Afghanistan on Wednesday knocked India out of contention for a place in the Asia Cup final.
Both teams – India and Afghanistan now head into the match on the back of successive defeats, having gone down to Pakistan and Sri Lanka in their first two games.
The Men in Blue, who have not performed to their full potential in the Super 4 stage, would like to put their house in order before playing their last game of the continental tournament.
With the T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia not far away, India skipper Rohit Sharma was keen on experimenting with players and the team combination. However, as far as Asia Cup 2022 is concerned, the experiments by Rohit and India management have backfired as the defending champions failed to even make it to the summit clash.
Get ready for the 5th #Super4 match of the DP World #AsiaCup 2022 between India 🇮🇳 and Afghanistan 🇦🇫⚔️
Catch the action LIVE exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar and Star Sports 📺#INDvAFG #ACC #AsiaCup2022 #GetReadyForEpic pic.twitter.com/tzwdp3GsWc
— AsianCricketCouncil (@ACCMedia1) September 7, 2022
Poor team selection and lack of flexibility were some of the biggest reasons behind India’s back-to-back demoralising defeats against Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the Super 4 stage. But, it is unlikely that India will stop experimenting anytime soon as after the defeat against Sri Lanka, Rohit asserted said the team will continue to experiment with players in the upcoming home series against Australia and South Africa post the Asia Cup 2022.
“We wanted to try out certain things. Before Asia Cup, we had four seamers, two spinners and one of them being an all-rounder.
“I always wanted to try and find out what happens when you play three seamers and two spinners and one seamer is an all-rounder. When you play with quality, you want to challenge yourself. The fourth seamer was not available, as he was sick,” Rohit said during the post-match conference.
“There are a lot of questions that we need to answer, we have found answers for some while playing in the last 3-4 series. Somewhere sometime, we will draw a line and say “yes that this combination needs to play.”
“We will try out more players in Australia and South Africa series till the T20 World Cup squad is announced.
“We have the sixth bowling option but we want to try the combination of the fifth bowler. When we go to World Cup then we would like to go with six bowlers. We have played a lot of matches with six bowlers,” he concluded.
If one goes by Rohit’s statement then it is highly probable that India will once again tinker the squad for the Afghanistan clash and it will be interesting to see if wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik makes his way back into the team, after having sat out in the last two matches.
One would also expect Rohit and management to take an inspired call and rejig the top three for a few games to see if there is any apparent change in the results as well as the approach as opener KL Rahul has been a big flop in the tournament, while Rohit himself found some form in the last match against Sri Lanka.
Only Virat Kohli has shown some consistency in the tournament having scored two half-centuries but even he got out for a duck during the Super 4 clash against the Island nation.
It is yet to be seen where Rishabh Pant and Deepak Hooda fit in the team as both the players have failed to make an impact and justify their spots in the playing XI. Moreover, India have another problem at their hands as they are lacking a specialist fifth bowler, a role for which Hardik Pandya can’t be considered as it puts a heavy burden on the all-rounder. Hence, pacer Deepak Chahar, who replaced Avesh Khan in the squad, might feature in today’s clash.
Talking about Afghanistan, the Mohammad Nabi-led team has a better spin attack on current form than India. This is a team that can chase down targets in the 170-odd range with its power hitters and can also restrict the opposition to manageable totals with the leader of the attack Rashid Khan intimidating the opposition.
Afghanistan have some top quality T20 players like Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Zadran, Mohammed Nabi, Hazratullah Zazai and the exciting Rahamanullah Gurbaz can really set the cat amongst pigeons.
Hearth break for Afghanistan 💔@fazalfarooqi10 conceded two sixes in two balls as Afghanistan lost the match by 1 wicket. 😣#AfghanAtalan | #AsiaCup2022 | #AFGvPAK pic.twitter.com/7eJQlxRcPv
— Afghanistan Cricket Board (@ACBofficials) September 7, 2022
However, the team’s collective inexperience of not playing the bigger cricketing nations regularly has cost them games numerous times, including the last night, when they failed to held their nerves against Pakistan and failed to defend 11 runs in the last over of the low-scoring thriller.
Teams:
India: Rohit Sharma (captain), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Deepak Hooda, Dinesh Karthik, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Deepak Chahar.
Afghanistan: Mohammad Nabi (captain), Najibullah Zadran (vice-captain), Afsar Zazai (WK), Azmatullah Omarzai, Farid Ahmad Malik, Fazal Haq Farooqi, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Hazratullah Zazai, Ibrahim Zadran, Karim Janat, Mujib ur Rahman, Najibullah Zadran, Naveen ul Haq, Noor Ahmad, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (WK), Rashid Khan and Samiullah Shinwari.
from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/ERpzJM4
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