The batting power of both England and India will be on show today and will have much to do with the outcome of the semi final match of the T20 Cricket World Cup at the Adelaide, Oval.
India’s batting has picked up at the right time to meet the demands of the knock-out stage while in the England line-up there is plenty of firepower that could click at the most appropriate time given the fact that their most explosive hitter of the ball Jos Buttler is yet to play the kind of innings that can leave bowlers rattled all-together.
Both teams have also not featured in knock-out matches in the T20 World Cup for quite some time which makes today’s contest a hard prediction even for the most die-hard pundits of the game.
Most teams are only as good as they were in their last outing and going by that philosophy India may hold an edge in the batting that made 185 in their last outing against Bangladesh and their top four of KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Suriyakumar Yadav can easily make the difference between the two teams that in turn makes it imperative for the England bowlers to strike hard and fast. Against Sri Lanka in their last outing the England fast bowlers did their job in a way that the team conceded 50 runs in the first five overs until spinner Adil Rashid came on and brought his team back into contention.
Against the better and more accomplished Indian batters, England’s fast bowlers cannot lapse in giving them room to swing their bats.
England’s batting line up though one of the best in the business in T20 cricket has yet to come out in full glory and today’s encounter provides an opportunity that they cannot afford to miss out especially against the Indian new ball bowlers who are not as menacing as their injured speedster Jasprit Bumrah.
England will no doubt depend heavily on their opening pair of Jos Buttler and Alex Hales who in their last two matches put on 81 against New Zealand and 75 against Sri Lanka.
A failure of the opening partnership will mean more pressure on Ben Stokes, Liam Livingstone and Moeen Ali to deliver.
Teams:
England: Jos Buttler (captain), Alex Hales, Ben Stokes, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Moeen Ali, Dawid Malan, Sam Curran, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood, Adil Rashid
India: Rohit Sharma (captain) KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suriyakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Rishab Pant, Axar Patel, Ravinchandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammad Shami
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