India V Australia, World T20 Preview - Match 31
India will carry immense buoyancy from the manner in which it snatched victory out of the gaping jaws of defeat against Bangladesh.Inasmuch as India kept its nerve in a tense run chase, it will be mindful of the fact that it wasn’t a game it won as much as Bangladesh lost. Two boring singles away from elimination, it will be grateful for the lifeline thrown by the Bangladeshis. India will also be thankful for the fact that its fate now rests entirely in its own hands. The equation is fairly straightforward, even if the task isn’t – best Australia, and don’t worry about anything else.
India’s recent and overall record against the Aussies notwithstanding, that of course is easier said than done. Australia hasn’t become the team to beat across formats through accident. This side may not carry the same aura that other teams in the past have done, but like Mumbai in domestic cricket, Australia at the highest level knows what it takes to close out matches and tournaments. That’s precisely what makes its World T20 drought hard to explain, because especially when it comes to batting, it has a top six as explosive as any in the world, with commensurate experience of having played in India, courtesy the IPL route.
India has historically been a reluctant T20I protagonist, playing the bare minimum number of games and therefore never a collective force at the international level. This time around, its lead-up has been impeccable, with 11 T20Is starting from the end of January the perfect platform from which to launch the World T20 campaign. The first three of those 11 matches were in Australia in a series India swept 3-0, but the Australian sides in those matches were makeshift, patchwork outfits that bear little resemblance to the squad currently in India.
Each of those three wins was achieved on a batting beauty, India stacking up the runs batting first in the first two games and hunting down 200 in the final match with inexorable relentlessness. While neither side will, understandably, read too much into that series – or the fact that India shades the head-to-heads 8-4, have won both skirmishes on Indian soil and share a 2-2 record in World T20s – the feel-good factor in the Indian camp stemming from a command performance away from home will not count for nothing.
Virat Kohli and R Ashwin have been the batting and bowling vanguards respectively, but India has by no means been reliant on just one or two individuals. The bowling unit has been particularly impressive, even if most of the surfaces have been to their liking. It’s about time the batsmen set stall; after all, if they don’t shape up now, they will most likely have to ship out.
Teams (from):
India: Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt, wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Ashish Nehra, Jasprit Bumrah, Harbhajan Singh, Ajinkya Rahane, Mohammed Shami, Pawan Negi.
Australia: Aaron Finch, Usman Khawaja, David Warner, Steven Smith (capt), Glenn Maxwell, Shane Watson, James Faulkner, Peter Nevill (wk), Adam Zampa, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Marsh, John Hastings, Ashton Agar, Andrew Tye.
?Get live cricket scores and follow every ball of the ICC World Twenty20 with the official app