The much-anticipated India vs Pakistan fixture is less than two days away from now. Even though there have been two India-Pakistan cricket matches recently at the Asia Cup 2022, there is far from being an overdose of this rivalry. In fact, fans are waiting with bated breath for India's opening match at the T20 World Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday.
Before the high-voltage game, which is often charged with emotions, SporsTiger reached out to the biggest stakeholders of the sport- the fans- to know what they feel about the Men in Blue's chances at the ICC event. While most Indian feels do feel that India should be able to overcome Pakistan, there are a few (yes, they exist) who think Pakistan might be able to repeat their last year's heroics once again in Australia.
SportsTiger interacted and found one such fan who feels that India might not be able to win the match against Pakistan. He hinted at the Indian top order's poor performance in crunch games of multi-nation tournaments in the recent past. In particular, the fan was not pleased with KL Rahul's performance. He said: " KL Rahul always puts on a flop show in big matches."
Check out what he had to say here:
India boast of a better head-to-head record against Pakistan in T20Is. The two teams have met each other a total of 11 times in T20Is and while India have won on 8 occasions (including the Bowl Out match in the 2007 T20 World Cup), Pakistan have won just thrice.
Meanwhile, it's not all good news coming from Melbourne as rain is expected to play spoilsport during India vs Pakistan match. As per the official website of Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, there is 80 per cent chance of any rain during the day with an expected downpour from 3 to 8 mm. The temperatures are expected to be between 13-18 Degree Celsius.
While fans are wanting to see a full game, teams would also want to get their campaign going with a full match rather than a rain-affected game or a washout.
Squads:
India: Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant, Dinesh Karthik, Hardik Pandya, R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammad Shami.
Pakistan: Babar Azam (c), Shadab Khan, Asif Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Haider Ali, Haris Rauf, Iftikhar Ahmed, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Hasnain, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Wasim, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shan Masood. Standby Players: Usman Qadir, Mohammad Haris, Shahnawaz Dahani.