BRIDGETOWN: India have won the toss and elected to bat first against Afghanistan in the 43rd match of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 here on Thursday.
Both sides made one change to their lineups as Kuldeep Yadav came in for Mohammed Siraj while Afghanistan brought Hazratullah Zazai for Karim Janat.
India: Rohit Sharma (c), Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh.
Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Ibrahim Zadran, Hazratullah Zazai, Gulbadin Naib, Azmatullah Omarzai, Mohammad Nabi, Najibullah Zadran, Rashid Khan (c), Noor Ahmad, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi.
Speaking at the toss, India’s skipper Rohit Sharma stated that the track looks good to bat now but anticipated it to get slower with time.
“The track looks alright, don’t know how it’ll play. Feel it’ll get slower. Better than New York (laughs), we won there which was more important. Need to adapt now. We’ve been here 3-4 days and have practised,” Rohit said.
Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan shared that he would have batted first but insisted that the toss does not matter much in T20s and vowed to focus on their execution.
“We’d have batted first as well but in T20s toss doesn’t matter as much as execution. Happy with how things have gone so far, especially with the batters,” Rashid said.
“Need to do the right things at the right time and control emotions as we go. We’ve been here couple of days longer than India which should help,” he added.
India and Afghanistan have come face-to-face eight times in T20 Internationals. The Men in Blue have a perfect record, winning seven matches while one ended in a no result.
Matches 8, India 7, Afghanistan 0, NR 1
India and Afghanistan have so far done well in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 as both sides booked their spots in the Super Eight stage with a game to spare.
The 2007 champions, however, remained unbeaten at the group stage while Afghanistan suffered defeat in their last group match against West Indies.
India: NR, W, W, W, W
Afghanistan: L, W, W, W, W
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