A lot has happened since Team India last played a game of cricket. The last time Virat Kohli and company took to the field, the Indian Premier League (IPL) still had eight teams and Meta was still called Facebook.
It has been a week since Pakistan snapped their World Cup jinx against their neighbours with a lop-sided victory in Dubai. Babar Azam’s men would go on to play two more matches since then, beating New Zealand and Afghanistan respectively to take a huge step towards qualifying for the semi-final.
India, however, find themselves in a somewhat tricky position even if they’ve played a solitary game in the 2021 T20 World Cup so far. They are, after all, up against New Zealand — a side that has caused them more World Cup heartbreaks than any other — at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Sunday.
The India-New Zealand World Cup rivalry is almost as one-sided as that of India and Pakistan. Except it’s the Kiwis that actually dominate this one with seven wins in 10 meetings across ODI and T20I World Cups over the last 46 years, the most recent instance being the defeat at Manchester in the 2019 World Cup semis.
Their victory over India in the 2000 Knockout Tournament final as well as the recent World Test Championship final further lends credence to New Zealand’s wood over India in ICC events. The last time they faced off in a T20 World Cup, Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi made a mockery of the Indian batting lineup, bundling them out for 79 at Nagpur five years ago.
India will hope to bounce back strong after their 10-wicket loss to Pakistan in their T20 World Cup opening game. AP
The past record however, had little impact on the proceedings last Sunday as the likes of Shaheen Shah Afridi, Babar and Mohammad Rizwan bulldozed the Indians with a clinical display, and Kohli’s men will hope to produce a similar display in a little over 24 hours from now as the seek their first victory against New Zealand in a T20 World Cup.
One of the major reasons behind their defeat at the hands of Pakistan was the top-order failure, with both Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul getting dismissed cheaply by Afridi inside the powerplay. Rohit, in particular, appears to have some discomfort when facing the angle created by left-arm seamers, and on Sunday he and Rahul face another stern challenge in the form of a new-ball spell from Trent Boult.
“Hopefully, from my point of view, it swings around a little bit and I can mirror what Shaheen did the other night,” said Boult, a man who has won Rohit many a game while playing for the Mumbai Indians in the IPL, in the pre-match press conference on Saturday.
And if they found it tough scoring against Shadab Khan and the other Pakistani spinners in the middle overs, Sodhi and Santer might just take the challenge up a notch.
As for the team composition as far as the Indian team goes, a major question mark hangs over the choice between Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur for the seam-bowling all-rounder.
Despite not bowling enough overs, Pandya has been a first choice for Kohli and the rest of the team leadership purely for his impact with the bat in the middle and slog overs. And yet, Ravindra Jadeja was sent ahead of him last Sunday, leaving Pandya just a handful of deliveries in the last couple of overs.
Shardul, on the other hand, is a useful batter down the order who is far more effective a seamer, one who is known for getting the breakthroughs even if he does leak runs.
Pandya, though, has been seen bowling in the nets in the run up to India’s second game of the tournament, ICC posting a video of the same on their social media handles which will give Kohli confidence in his ability to bowl a couple of overs in the middle stages of the innings. And let’s not forget the captain himself offering to roll his arm over to act as the team’s sixth bowler, if the need for one arises.
The Black Caps too have their share of worries at the moment, having lost their opening game to the upbeat Pakistanis on Tuesday. Several batters got starts, but none of them could convert it into a big score, and much like their performance against India, the Pakistanis didn’t let the Kiwis forge big partnerships either.
Skipper Kane Williamson’s form too is a major cause for worry for the side. After a mixed run with the bat during Sunrisers Hyderabad’s forgettable IPL 2021 campaign, Williamson was less than impressive in his 26-ball 25 against Pakistan. His counterpart Kohli though was brilliant in negating the lethal spells from Afridi and Haris Rauf, becoming the only Indian to score a half-century that day. On Sunday, both will hope to lead their teams from the front in their quest for their first points on the board.
As far as Team India’s weeklong break between their first two games is concerned, some are seeing it as a chance for the team to regroup after a morale-affecting loss. Australian pace legend Brett Lee, when asked about India’s break, said it was an opportunity for Kohli and his men to get the basics right again.
“Well you could look at that two ways. You could say that it’s probably detrimental to their campaign because they have to wait for so long, so in their minds they can stew over it. But if you look from a positive point of view, you can’t change the scheduling and you look at the glass being I guess half full, the fact that as you mentioned they can take their time, they’ve now got some time off to reflect on I guess the cricket that they didn’t play so well, and how they can improve on fixing the issues that they had, but also to, and I guess most importantly, is time they get back in there and just do the basics right again.
“So I think that you could look at it and say that will help them. There are going to be people that will say it’s going to be detrimental. Personally, I think that having a bit of an extended break might be exactly what they need,” Lee told Firstpost in a chat.
The upcoming contest will certainly will be looked at as something of a knockout for both India teams involved given that Pakistan have virtually sealed the other semi-final spot from the group, leaving the Men in Blue and the Black Caps the strong contenders for the other. Lest we forget, there’s also the challenge posed by Afghanistan with their pinch hitters and a world-class spin unit.
Squads:
India: Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ishan Kishan, Shardul Thakur, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Varun Chakravarthy, Rahul Chahar
New Zealand: Kane Williamson (c), Todd Astle, Trent Boult, Mark Chapman, Devon Conway, Lockie Ferguson, Martin Guptill, Kyle Jamieson, Daryl Mitchell, Jimmy Neesham, Glenn Phillips, Mitchell Santner, Tim Seifert, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee.
Match starts 7.30 pm