India will lock horns with Bangladesh in a crucial Super 12 encounter of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Adelaide on November 2, Wednesday, at 13:30 IST.
Both teams are on four points having played an equal number of games but India are ahead in the second place on account of a better NRR.
Preview
India will be looking to bounce back from their disappointing loss against South Africa when they take on the Tigers. They started with two wins on the trot and then performed miserably against the Proteas. The fielders dropped easy catches and the top-order failed once again. These two aspects have emerged as real areas of concern for Rohit Sharma’s men. The bowlers did a really good job, though, as they helped their team in taking the game right down to the wire, and they will be eager to deliver another good performance once again. Dinesh Karthik, India’s wicketkeeper-batter also walked off the field with a back injury in the last game and he is a doubtful starter against Bangladesh. Rishabh Pant will be expected to replace him in case Karthik fails to recover.
Bangladesh, on the other hand, bounced back from their crushing loss against South Africa with a thrilling three-run win over Zimbabwe. The pacers have been performing really well and another good outing will be expected from them once again. Shakib Al Hasan needs more from his batters, though, including himself. Bangladesh rode on Najmul Hossein Shanto’s brilliant knock to get to 150 in the last game and were restricted to just 144 against Netherlands. Barring one or two batters, the performance of the other players in the line-up has been really disappointing. They will need to step up as a unit in case they want to deliver a competitive performance against India.
Predicted Playing XI
India
Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh
Bangladesh
Najmul Hossain Shanto, Soumya Sarkar, Litton Das, Shakib Al Hasan (c), Afif Hossain, Yasir Ali, Mosaddek Hossain, Nurul Hasan (wk), Mustafizur Rahman, Hasan Mahmud, Taskin Ahmed
Key Players
Virat Kohli: The Indian skipper has already scored two fifties in this tournament, both in a match-winning cause. Kohli made an unbeaten 82 against Pakistan and then followed it up with yet another good knock of an unbeaten 62 against Netherlands. Although he fell for just 12 in the last game against South Africa, Kohli can be expected to bounce back again.
Shakib Al Hasan: The Bangladeshi skipper is his team’s most important player as he has the ability to make a massive impact with both bat and ball. Shakib is yet to do anything special with the bat in this tournament but he has already picked up three wickets in as many games.
Prediction
Bangladesh have the momentum going into this contest but India are a far more experienced side and can be expected to bounce back strongly in this game. India have also had the upper hand over Bangladesh in T20Is and hence they are the favourites to win this match.
