Hurt, India have enough reserves

Rohit Mahajan 

Southampton, June 21

First, let’s get the cliché out of the way: “It’s not about against whom we’re playing. I think it’s about how we play as individuals (that matters),” said Vijay Shankar, the India allrounder, on the eve of the match against Afghanistan.

But no, it does matter who you’re playing: They’d be playing Afghanistan, the No. 10 in the world, the lowest-ranked team in the tournament. India’s fans thus would consider it to be a duty for their team to win tomorrow, to score their fourth win of the tournament.

Afghanistan come into this game after a frightful hammering by England, and Eoin Morgan, who smashed 17 sixers against them in Manchester on June 18. Their leadership group is in some strife: Captain Gulbadin Naib offered a ‘no comments’ when asked about the alleged altercation involving a couple of players and fans in Manchester, or about coach Phil Simmons’ unfriendly comments regarding a former selector. About the game specifically, Naib hoped that the team’s top player, Rashid Khan, would be good to bowl after being smashed for 110 runs in nine overs by England.

Pant for India’s XI?

Will Rishabh Pant get a game tomorrow? If India are to give him a game to gauge his form, tomorrow is the best chance for them — no experimentation is likely to be done in the games against ‘proper’ established teams that India play later, such as West Indies and Bangladesh, and certainly not England. A game for Pant would also give some more recovery time to Vijay Shankar, who got a Jasprit Bumrah yorker on his foot two days ago. Vijay, though, said that he is fit and “hopefully” would be able to play, so India might not make a change in the XI that beat Pakistan on June 16.

But injury has indeed forced a change in the bowling line-up: The hamstring injury to Bhuvneshwar Kumar means that Mohammed Shami will open the bowling with Bumrah. They would be backed by Vijay, Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav and the two wrist-spinners, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. In other words, despite the injuries, India remain strong — probably strong enough to score an easy win over Afghanistan.

Pitch and conditions

If India choose to bat first, their explosive batting lineup will have a field day on the belter

286 is the average first innings score in the last five completed ODIs at the Rose Bowl 

734 runs scored by England and Pakistan in a bilateral series match in May

I don’t think we prepared that well for a tournament like this. It is a big stage, there will be ups and downs, but we have learnt a lot so far. We should have won at least one or two games; we had the opportunity to do so, but we lacked experience —  Rashid Khan, Afghanistan spinner

Windies face must-win situation vs NZ 

Manchester: Their campaign deflated after early promise, the West Indies face a do-or-die battle against a confident-looking New Zealand in a crucial tie here tomorrow. The Windies started their campaign with a bang, demolishing Pakistan by seven wickets. But since then, things have gone from bad to worse for the Caribbeans and they have suffered three defeats (against Australia, England and Bangladesh) while the game against South Africa was washed out. The Kiwis, on the other hand, are sitting pretty at the second spot with nine points, which includes four wins out of five games with the match against India washed out. New Zealand have defeated Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and South Africa but their real test starts now. After Windies, they face Pakistan, Australia and England. Agencies