Zeenews Sports BureauColombo: India will have to quickly decide on their team combination as they launch their ICC World Twenty20 campaign against minnows Afghanistan in Colombo on Wednesday, hoping to get into the groove for the tougher battles ahead.
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A win will ensure a Super Eights berth for champions of the 2007edition even before they take on England in their second and final group league match on September 23.
In their only meeting till date, India had comfortably beaten Afghanistan by seven wickets during the last edition of World T20 in the West Indies.
While the battle of attrition will start once India take on England, a smooth start against the Afghans will certainly help the `Men in Blue` hit a good rhythm and the team management will have an idea about the performance of their preferred combination.
The Indians are faced with the dilemma of whether to go in with five specialist bowlers or opt for the additional batsman, considering that bowling in the death overs has been a worry.
Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni is not someone who is known to tinker with the playing XI and believes in giving his preferred players a long rope. In fact, he has indicated that he would go in with four specialist bowlers and rely on his part-timers to fill in the fifth bowler`s quota.
But if the part-timers do not perform upto expectation, he is willing to go in with five specialist bowlers.
The batting order looks more or less settled with seasoned opening pair of Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag, solid middle-order consisting of Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni himself, it will be interesting to see what kind of bowling combination Dhoni-Fletcher pair use.
Due to the absence of big names, the unity of the Afghani contingent has always been their big strength. Keeping the format of T20 in mind , the shortest format, this would possibly enable them to shock a few big teams.
The presence of Mohammad Shahzad, Noor Ali would strengthen the batting department. Karim Sadiq and Javed Ahmadi would lend a lot of stability and balance at the top.
In-form Dawlat Zardan will play a very crucial role as he is looked at as someone who will provide the early breakthrough.
Samiullah Shenwani and Shapoor Zardan will also have to play crucial roles for the success of Afghanistan. The trump card for the Afghans will be their talismanic all-rounder Mohammed Nabi.
India Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Manoj Tiwary, Rohit Sharma, Irfan Pathan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Zaheer Khan, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Ashok Dinda.
Afghanistan Squad: Nawroz Mangal (capt), Asghar Stanikzai, Dawlat Zadran, Gulbodin Naib, Hamid Hassan, Izatullah Dawlatzai, Javed Ahmadi, Karim Sadiq, Mohammad Nabi, Mohammad Shahzad, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nasim Baras, Samiullah Shenwari, Shafiqullah, Shapoor Zadran.
today’s fixture involves India vs Afghanistan cricket match. The match will see an interesting MS vs MS fight
It is not clear how many knows MS Dhoni back in Afghanistan but certainly more people know the MS from the troubled neighbour of India as both the neighbours meet in their first match of ICC World T20 tournament on Wednesday at the R. Premdasa stadtium, Colombo. The match starts at 7:30 PM IST.
Mohammad Shahzad not only share the two most important letters of his name with Mahendra Singh Dhoni but his work with gloves and bat is similar to his team. Nawroz Mangal may be the captain of the Afghna team but Shahzad is more popular as MS in his team.
MS of A loves to play like MS of India and is the highest run scorer for his team though the runs are just too meager, 312 runs in 11 matches. MS of A loves to copy the helicopter shot like its inventor MSD but it would be a sort of treat to watch how he execute it.
The experts say that for Afghanistan, playing would be much more important than winning or best said, avoiding defeat against India. Though cricket wise Afghanistan’s qualification for back-to-back World Twenty20s and the Under-19 World Cup is not a mean achievement for this war-ravaged country.
Afghanistan has beaten Sri Lanka A in the warm up match by 51 runs but lost to West Indies by eight wickets in the second warm up match. It is difficult how much difference it would make for the Indian batting line up but missing strike bowler Hamid Hassan would be a huge disappointment for Afghanistan who has been ruled out due to injury.
On a more serious note, India may be feeling quite relieved playing against the minnows but they too would like to avoid any hiccups early in the tournament. India has lost its two last T20 encounters and its balling may be put some hard-hitting like done by Kamran Akmal in the second warm match which it lost to Pakistan by five wickets. Though India won the first warm match against Sri Lanka by 26 runs.
Indian skipper MS Dhoni seems to be not to open to reveal his strategy. He says that as their top seven batsmen are doing well, he himself need not promote. But at the same time he adds that is the most likely scenario but it may change later.
MS Dhoni might not find it too difficult to decide on whether to play seven batsmen or five bowlers in this game but in the next match he would have to make a tough decision because bowling seems to go brittle under pressure.
On personal level every Indian would love to see some firework from the cancer-recovered batsman Yuvraj Singh who has shown quite a good progress in recent games.
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