India's men's cricket team for the Hangzhou Asian Games lost a pre-departure warm-up match against Karnataka by four wickets on Friday, September 22 in Bengaluru. Batting first the Indian team could only manage to get to 133 in their allotted 20 overs as Karnataka's right-arm medium pacer Manoj Bhandage ripped through the batting order and finished with the bowling figures of 4-1-15-4.
The slow left-arm orthodox Shubhang Hegde and right-arm pacer Vasuki Koushik also bruised their batting order as the duo claimed six wickets in total (three each).
The Indian team got off to a wonderful start as openers Prabhsimran Singh and Yashasvi Jaiswal looked composed to get big scores. Prabhsimran got out one shy of a half-century and hit seven fours and one maximum in his innings. On the other hand, Jaiswal was the more aggressive opener and raced to 31 off just 17 balls with the help of seven boundaries.
However, as soon as both the openers departed, the Indian team's innings lost momentum and no other batter looked like taking the attack to the Karnataka bowlers.
In response, Manish Pandey stepped up to the challenge from Karnataka's side and scored an unbeaten half-century (52 off 40 balls) to take his side home in a smooth run chase.
Meanwhile, the captain of the Hangzhou-bound Indian team Ruturaj Gaikwad was not a part of the fixture against Karnataka as he has been included in the first two ODIs of the ongoing three-match series against Australia and is a part of the playing XI in the first ODI in Mohali.
Indian men's cricket team for the Asian Games 2023:
Ruturaj Gaikwad (C), Mukesh Kumar, Shivam Mavi, Shivam Dube, Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rahul Tripathi, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Washington Sundar, Shahbaz Ahmed, Ravi Bishnoi, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh
