Wednesday 30 / October / 2024
India and England have picked themselves up quite brilliantly after their losses in their first game and have given themselves the chance to get through to the semifinals. Of course with two more matches to be played it is not a given that they will qualify and they will need to play at the top of their game once again.
England play Afghanistan and though the Afghanistan team is a competitive one they may not have the ammunition to beat England. Yes flair can sometimes overcome lack of experience at this level and the Afghans have certainly displayed great flair so far but they have fallen short when it matters.
That is more due to the inexperience of playing against the big teams for when it has come to the tipping point they have lost the grip on the game. England’s batting has been tremendous but its the bowling on Indian pitches where they have had a bit of a problem and have conceded loads of runs in both their matches so far. Maybe going in with an extra spinner may do the trick for them and if there is one game in which they can try that it is the one against the qualifiers. India which is usually set in its batting will want their top order to fire more than it has so far. T20 is not only about aerial shots as Virat Kohli has so ably demonstrated. Those shots come a lot easier after one has had a meas
ure of the pitch. With the pitches helping the spinners it is never easy to go for the big shots as it is on pitches with true bounce like at the Wankhede Stadium. India are loath to make a change unless there is an injury to one of its players so even if the game is against the qualifiers there shouldn’t be any surprises in the playing squad.
India are way behind in the net run rate at the moment and so they would want to improve on that but as they know from recent experience Bangladesh are not the pushovers they were earlier and are far more competitive. The priority therefore is to get into a winning position and then think about the run rate. - PMG
