However, In the Super 12 stage of the T20 World Cup, India will face a selection issue, according to former Pakistan cricketer Salman Butt. He believes, however, that having a headache will be beneficial because they have several in-form players to pick from.
Butt praised India’s warm-up methods, claiming that they allowed even out-of-form players to receive some game time and score runs. Following India’s victory against Australia in a warm-up match,
“Now a good headache will start for India. Ishan Kishan is in form, Suryakumar Yadav is in form, Rishabh Pant finished the last match and Hardik Pandya has also been sent to finish matches and he has stayed unbeaten. Today, Rohit Sharma played and hit 60 off 41 and KL Rahul again played a beautiful knock of 39. So The whole team is in form.” he said
Suryakumar Yadav looked in terrific form, scoring 28 off 27 deliveries before Rohit Sharma retired to give Hardik Pandya some time in the middle.
Butt added Virat Kohli and David Warner, who hasn’t been in the best of form heading into the World Cup, are big-match performers who will show up on a huge stage like the World Cup.
Virat Kohli
“Virat Kohli is a big match player, he has scored runs all over the world. He is not in the best of form right now, but today he rested himself. Sometimes rest helps you regain form. When you take a break and come back fresh, you respond better going into a big match. So we will see that in the tournament. When the main matches come, these are big players. They say when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” He said
“And these two (Kohli and Warner) are tough. And they know the art of run-scoring. Someone’s form can be good or bad. But they are too good to be left out because they haven’t scored runs recently. And Kohli, in the IPL, has hit a couple of fifties. And he played well in the last two T20Is against England as well. That is positive for India.” He added
“India beat Australia rather comfortably in their practice match. They look all ready to go in the World Cup. They have used the practice matches very well. The way they have brought everyone back in form. They gave Ishan Kishan a chance, he scored runs, today they promoted Suryakumar Yadav up the order and he scored runs. Rohit Sharma did not play in the last match, he made runs today. So everyone got some game time. The real purpose of warm-up matches is to give everyone game time.” He said
The Super 12 match versus Pakistan will kick off the Men in Blue’s T20 World Cup campaign on October 24.
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