Team India start their ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024 campaign on Wednesday, June 5 against Ireland in New York. This is the first time in 15 years that both these teams will be facing each other in T20 World Cup. Ireland are coming off a win against Pakistan last month in a T20I but Sri Lanka dominated them in the warm-up game. However, they have shown that they have enough in the tank to challenge the big teams and with the surface playing as it has in New York the gap between the two teams has only reduced.
India will take confidence from the fact that they have played once in these conditions and would fancy their chances against a comparatively weaker opponent, especially with Virat Kohli, one of the most experienced players in such conditions available and likely to open. How Ireland batters play the conditions and the Indian bowlers might be the decisive factor but there will be a lot of running between the wickets and focus on singles and doubles more than boundaries with the ground size being big.
India start as favourites, definitely, with their all-round strength but they would discount the Irish at their own peril.
My Dream11 team for ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024 Match No 8, IND vs IRE
Virat Kohli (c), Lorcan Tucker (wk), Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Paul Stirling, Ravindra Jadeja (vc), Axar Patel, Curtis Campher, George Dockrell, Jasprit Bumrah, Kuldeep Yadav
Squads
India: Rohit Sharma(c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube
Ireland: Paul Stirling(c), Andrew Balbirnie, Lorcan Tucker(w), Harry Tector, Curtis Campher, George Dockrell, Gareth Delany, Ross Adair, Barry McCarthy, Mark Adair, Joshua Little, Craig Young, Benjamin White, Neil Rock, Graham Hume
