India to take on south Africa in 2nd T20I match
Team India will lock horns with south Africa on 12th June Sunday to play the second T20I in Cuttack. After losing their previous game, Rishabh Pant and team will seek a comeback against Proteas.
Pant who is leading the national squad is expected to focus on improving the mistakes from the previous match.
In the first T20I match, David Miller and Rassie van der Dussen troubled Indian bowlers with their lethal batting and helped their team get a lead of 1-0 in the five-match series.
Seen as a future white-ball captain, Pant's stakes have suddenly come down post delhi Capitals IPL season and that has coincided with the resurgence of his contender for the role, Hardik Pandya.
Pant's role as a captain was criticized, his body language never stood out and he looked under pressure.
Returning to full fitness, Pandya led Gujarat Titans to the title in their debut season. He last played for the national team in the 2021 T20 World Cup.
But he struggled with the ball during the first Twenty20 match against SA as he gave away 18 runs in his only over.
The bowling department will be a point of concern for skipper Pant as he would have to make a call between Arshdeep Singh and Umran Malik.
While the batting looks in good shape, the pace department looked flat in the opening match.
Seniormost Bhuvneshwar Kumar did not look the same and leaked runs in the death overs, while Harshal Patel too was taken to cleaners.
On the other hand, with South African individual players' success in the recently concluded IPL, they are finding themselves at 'home'.
"Definitely (IPL has helped). I watched a lot of IPL games, did not get much of an opportunity to play but I had a pretty good idea what their bowlers would do and the conditions," van der Dussen had said.
"Indian conditions are different from what we have in South Africa. I spent two months here, been in these conditions, been in the heat, so had acclimatized to that and that goes for everyone," he added.
In the form of his life, Miller who scored 481 runs at 68.71 in the IPL to play a key role in GT's triumph, has started in ominous fashion and looked unstoppable both against spin and pace at Kotla.
Quinton de Kock, David Miller, and Van der Dussen will act as backbone for the team's batting and the likes of Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje will counter the India's batting line-up.
The team had arrived in Cuttack on 10th June, Friday.
Full squads -
India: Rishabh Pant, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Shreyas Iyer,Dinesh Karthik, Hardik Pandya, Venkatesh Iyer, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Umran Malik.
South Africa: Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock, Reeza Hendricks, Heinrich Klaasen, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje, Wayne Parnell, Dwaine Pretorius, Kagiso Rabada, Tabraiz Shamsi, Tristan Stubbs, Rassie van der Dussen, Marco Jansen.
The match starts at 7pm IST.
