India skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and opted to bowl against arch-rival Pakistan in the high-voltage clash of the Super 12 stage of the ongoing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in Melbourne on Sunday.
A lot is at stake for both sides as they look forward to starting their campaign at the iconic MCG. The skies are so far clear in Melbourne and fans can expect a full 40-overs-a-side contest. After facing off against each other twice during the Asia Cup 2022, both teams are scheduled to square off against one another once again this year at the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup 2022, India and Pakistan are in group 2.
India and Pakistan both played one warm-up match before they started their T20 World Cup campaign. Pakistan suffered a defeat to England by 6 wickets in their warm-up match, while India defeated Australia by 6 runs.
India lost by 10 wickets to Pakistan in their group-stage encounter in the T20 World Cup last year and that played a big part in knocking them out of the tournament early.
Speaking at the time of the toss, India skipper Rohit Sharma said, “We are going to field first. Looks like a good pitch, it’s always nice with overcast conditions. Think the ball will swing around a bit. Preparations have been good. We played a couple of practice games in Brisbane. Time to come out and enjoy ourselves. We were expecting nothing less than this, hopefully, we’ll entertain them. We have seven batters, three seamers and two spinners.”
Speaking at the time of the toss, Pakistan captain Babar Azam said, ” Toss is not in our hands. We’ll try to post around 160-170. We have prepared well, and we are ready for this big game. We won a series back home, and we played a tri-series in New Zealand, so we are prepared. We have three fast bowlers and two spinners.”
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik(w), Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami and Arshdeep Singh.
Pakistan (Playing XI): Babar Azam(c), Mohammad Rizwan(w), Shan Masood, Haider Ali, Mohammad Nawaz, Shadab Khan, Iftikhar Ahmed, Asif Ali, Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah. (ANI)
