IND vs PAK: The Indian team for years now has dominated their contemporaries with their batting prowess. The men in blue which have the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and KL Rahul can dominate any opposition on any given day. But for the past few years, the Indian batting lineup has faced many collapses, and that too on big stages. Be it in the ICC ODI World Cup semi-finals in 2015 & 2019, the ICC Championship Trophy Final in 2017, or the 2016 semi-final of the T20I World Cup, India have always crashed out because of their dismal batting performances. The same thing happened to team India when they clashed against Pakistan in the T20I World Cup in 2021.
With the Asia Cup going on, team India will try to rectify this shortcoming and prepare themselves for the big stage, the T20I World Cup scheduled to be played in Australia later this year. In the first match against India, Rohit Sharma won the toss and decided to field first. The Indian pacers were right on the money and they left no stone unturned to restrict the Pakistan batsmen to a small total of 147 runs. Old ghosts came to haunt the Indian team back as they started proceedings with their chase. Team India lost KL Rahul early on with Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli not doing much and leaving a lot to do for the middle-order. Both Virat Kohli and KL Rohit Sharma departed in quick succession and that left India reeling at 53/3. Courtesy of Hardik Pandya's 33 off 17 deliveries and Ravindra Jadeja's 35 off 29 deliveries, India went on to clinch the match by 5 wickets.
For some time now, this has been a recurring problem with team India, the likes of Virat Kohli and KL Rahul look completely out of touch as of now and this isn't good news for tesm India keeping the World Cup in mind. The Indian management had tried to open with Rishabh Pant who doesn't have impressive numbers in T20I cricket but they somehow altered their minds and threw Suryakumar Yadav into the mix. Pant opened with Rohit in England and Suryakumar Yadav opened in West Indies leaving fans and experts all around the globe clueless.
In the recently concluded match against Pakistan, the Indian team management tried to experiment and sent Jadeja ahead of Suryakumar Yadav. This might have been done to maintain the right-left combination but these abrupt decisions are not letting the Indian batting lineup settle down. For the past few months, the Indian team has found heroes in the likes of Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, and Dinesh Karthik, but it is high time that the top order starts contributing and ends their over reliance on the middle order and the lower middle order.
Pakistan XI: Babar Azam(c), Mohammad Rizwan(w), Fakhar Zaman, Iftikhar Ahmed, Khushdil Shah, Asif Ali, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf, Shahnawaz Dahani
India XI: Rohit Sharma(c), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Dinesh Karthik(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Avesh Khan, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh
