ICC World T20

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India take on New Zealand in their ICC World T20 opener on Tuesday. (Source: PTI)

Indian cricket team is in the zone and everything they have touched in the last 12 matches has turned into gold. From Hardik Pandya to Jasprit Bumrah, the MS Dhoni-led unit has finally found players for situations, not positions.(Full Coverage|| Fixtures||Photos)

CURRENT

RESULTS

FIXTURES

SCO

V

 HK

Scotland Beat Hong Kong By 8 Wickets (D/L Method)

SCORECARD

BAN

V

 OMN

Bangladesh Beat Oman By 54 Runs (D/L Method)

SCORECARD

NED

V

 IRE

Netherlands Beat Ireland By 12 Runs

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ZIM

V

 AFG

Afghanistan Beat Zimbabwe By 59 Runs

SCORECARD

India seems to have switched on cruise control from the Australia T20 series. The batsmen were consistent even during the 1-4 loss in the ODIs, but it was the role played by the bowlers which lifted this unit. The combination of Ashish Nehra and Jasprit Bumrah turned out to be ideal for MS Dhoni as the seamers gave the skipper what he was searching for the past year: early wickets.

Dhoni tried various combinations from Bhuvneshwar to Umesh to even Ashiwn, but nothing clicked. India conceded runs and surrendered games after posting decent totals – refer the Australia ODIs. The wait, however, ended with Nehra’s return and inclusion of the skillful Bumrah.

SWOT: India’s World T20 squad

Bumrah is not a big mover of the ball, nowhere close to Bhuvneshwar of the old or Mohammed Shami at his peak. But what separates him from the rest are the angles he generates and ability to hit the block-hole more often than not.

With Bumrah, Dhoni gets enough penetration at the start and a tight over or two at the death. A controlled seamer bowling from the other end allows Nehra to go for wickets. The veteran, during his on-off stint with India, became the captain’s ‘favourite’ for his ability to pick wickets.

READ: India get a feel of the expectations in Mumbai

Nehra does leak a boundary here and there, but his early inroads puts the opposition on the mat early in the innings. And, even in the shorter format, wickets are gold, more so because they result in a dot ball.

In the last ten T20I matches he played, Nehra returned with 13 wickets at an economy of 7.61 and strike-rate of 15.6. Bumrah has done even better, picking 15 wickets in his 11 matches and conceding only 6.15 runs every over. If not lethal, India’s combination is turning out to be very effective so far.

With the seamers falling into place, Pandya’s inclusion gave this team much-needed balance. For India, it had always been spin, seam, batsmen and wicket-keeper. They tried Stuart Binny and failed, tried to convert Ashwin into one and failed again. Ravindra Jadeja did the job but not on a consistent basis.

After the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy – India’s domestic T20 competition – talks of Hardik Pandya, the all-rounder, gained ground. The Baroda right-hander rose to prominence during his IPL days with Mumbai Indians, but it was the run with Baroda in the domestic competitions which earned him a national call, ahead of his limited-overs state captain Irfan Pathan.

SACHIN: Bumrah can be game changer for India

Pandya, as Dhoni has often said, comes as a full package, much like the West Indies players. He bats, he bowls and is a leopard on the field. Safe pair of hands and ability to cover ground with ease gives his game a third dimension, completing the package.

Pandya, unlike Stuart Binny, India’s previous all-rounder, is not military-medium. He hits the deck hard, can generate bounce and flirts with the 140 kmph mark. Yes, he could be held guilty for swaying with emotions and erring in line, but he would only learn with a calm skipper keeping a close eye from behind the stumps.
He scored only 62 runs in 11 matches, but they have come at a strike-rate of 147.61. And in those 11 matches he has scalped 10 wickets conceding only 7.11 runs per over. Plus, add the seven catches, including a couple of blinders. India’s wait for a seam-bowling all-rounder could finally be over.

Live Score, India U-19 vs West Indies U-19, U-19 World Cup final: West Indies inch closer to trophy

Live Cricket Score, U-19 World Cup final, India vs West Indies: India take on West Indies on Sunday. (Source: ICC)

India U-19, unbeaten in the tournament so far, take on an inspired West Indies U-19 unit in the ICC U-19 World Cup final on Sunday. Catch the live scores and live updates from the match here. You canfollow the match in Hindi also.

Live cricket updates: India U-19 vs West Indies U-19

1532 hrs IST: Edge of the seat stuff! West Indies need 14 runs from 20 balls.

1522 hrs IST: Fruitful over for the West Indies to overcome rising required rate. Avesh concedes crucial six runs. Need 25 runs from 6 overs.

1512 hrs IST: What they’re playing for

The U-19 World Cup trophy (Source: ICC)

1511 hrs IST: That’s that for Mayank Dagar in this match. A tough catch chance for Rishabh Pant and that brings to an end his bowling spell. Finishes with figures of 10-1-25-3.

1509 hrs IST: SIX! Dagar gets hit for a six by Keemo Paul. That’s got to reduce the pressure on West Indies.

1500 hrs IST: Dagar is spinning the ball beautifully to earn himself more praise.

1430 hrs IST: Dagar earning plaudits from players – past and present.

Sri Lanka vs India: Good wake-up call to start World T20 preparations

MS Dhoni felt that another 25-30 runs could have made the contest interesting. (Source: PTI)

“Kaisa bhi wicket ho, hain toh India ka wicket! (Whatever it is, it is India’s wicket after all)” MS Dhoni smiled as he admitted being surprised by the slightly spicy Pune pitch, placing it in the context of returning from run-fests in Australia. Sometimes, acclimatisation to home conditions too makes its presence in cricket.

REPORT: Rookie pacers rattle India

Pune threw a naughty wink at cricketers used to flat tracks in India on Tuesday. And yet, at the end of a day when Indian batsmen were hustled by seam movement and bounce, it felt peevish to have a go at them. After all they have just returned from fattening themselves with runs on batting paradises in Australia and who would have thought they would be ambushed at home.

PHOTOS: India fall apart

One criticism could be laid on them that they didn’t adjust quickly enough and make course corrections after a horrendous start but that loses some sting considering the kind of pitches that are likely to roll their way in the lead-up and during the T20 World Cup.

However, this match also threw up another viewpoint, one that’s bound to cause some headaches for India. Even when Virat Kohli comes back, Yuvraj Singh and to an extent Suresh Raina can’t be trusted yet to pull India out of Pune-shaped holes. Even on tracks less spicy than this and certainly on pitches like this.

In a big game, even without the pitch being as tricky as this, the Indian middle order could find the task of revival difficult. They could ride on good starts without much fuss but can they pull India out of mini-crises? Luckily, there is still a month to go for the big event, and India will get a few more opportunities to iron out the middle-order muddle.

However, this performance also throws up another prism to look at. In the T20 format and considering the nature of the pitches that can be expected in general, India see more value in going with an all-out approach, as that cliché goes. And more often than not, it’s bound to be successful. Yes, Yuvraj and Raina, and possibly even Shikhar Dhawan, could have reacted better, and toned down their frenetic approach, but it doesn’t come as naturally to them.

Dhoni was asked a direct question about Yuvraj and Raina in such scenarios. Can other batsmen apart from you (Dhoni) change their game according to the pitch? “In this format we don’t need to change too much. Even if you change six balls, if you go run a ball for even six balls, the whole game can change.

If somebody scores 10 runs in two balls we say very well played. If somebody did that in 50 overs, we say hey you should have batted on. The demands of T20 are different. We will play T20 for a long time (in the immediate future). The consolidation period is from six to 10 balls. At the same time we have to look at the wicket.”

Fair call

The captain’s sentiment is obviously coming from the pitches that he is expecting will be rolled out in the future, and it’s a fair call. But he has to be ready for situations where if the top order gets shot out early and his middle gets a bit wobbly and he might have to push himself up the order to guide them through.

Dhoni believes this experience will help them find a way. “It is very rare in this format that all wickets fall. Usually this doesn’t happen, especially if you bat deep I don’t think it is a bad idea to test everyone. You will find out how strong the lower order is. If till the World Cup we keep playing on the strength of our top order, then the lower order could have to bat in a crucial situation all of a sudden.”

The home leg too has started just as the Australian tour had begun, with a slightly different twist. In Australia, in the ODIs initially, the Indian batsmen couldn’t quite up their tempo to set a target that would push Australia. Here, the batsmen couldn’t quite tone down their approach to set a lower-than-usual total and not aim too high. However, in the bigger picture, this is exactly the kind of game that India needed a month before the World Cup.

Bats of India’s did all the talking in Australia

Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma were majestic throughout the series. (Source: AP)

In nearly every media interaction on this tour, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhonirepeatedly kept referring to the side’s previous tour to Australia, spread across late 2014 and early 2015. He spoke of the trip in a loud and emphatic way, emphasing on how he trusted and backed his players to deliver in due course, even though they were being wound down by the hosts, first in the winless tri-series, and then later in the World Cup semifinals.

The nucleus of the side was more or less the same, and they were expected to offer considerable challenge, if not beat, the hosts. But they dramatically wilted every time they spotted the canary yellow jersey. It seemed some kind of a mental block, as they buckled down to the eventual, and deserving, world champions.

Also Read: ‘Yuvraj can express himself freely’

But no longed let it be said so. Though the whitewash came in the shortest form, and half a dozen of their protagonists not in the frame, beating Australia 3-0 at home is no inferior feat. The manner in which they achieved it surely shouldn’t be cast aside as an aberration.

Nothing exemplified this as the lethal approach their batsmen embraced. It’s hard to recollect any overseas pair of batsmen that has unleashed as much fury on their bowlers as Rohit Sharma andVirat Kohli in both formats, man of the series in ODIs and T20s respectively. It was like no matter how you bowl or who your bowlers are, either of them will hurt you, and sometimes both. They might have been beneficiaries of uniformly flat wickets and a set of bowlers who didn’t bother much to stretch the speedo’s limits, but sustaining such consistency and domination throughout the trip is something they can truly be proud of. And this they managed mostly with breathtaking but refined strokes.

PHOTOS: India complete whitewash

They might have lost the ODI series 4-1, but not without putting on respectable batting shows, far better than most other Indian line-ups on these shores. More than mere respectable perhaps, as thrice they surged past 300. Prior to them posting 309 for three in Perth, no other Indian team had crossed 300 before against the hosts in their backyard. In all they racked up a staggering body of 1521 runs and six hundreds (and a brace of 90s). And on most instances, India were in the hunt till perhaps the last three-four overs.

Milestone hunting myth

A major, almost cynical, criticism was that many of the batsmen showed a tendency to slow down when approaching milestones (they are not the first ones to cop with similar criticism), and hence they couldn’t quite accelerate the scoring and lift India’s tally to somewhere in the 340-350 region. But it owed much to their sedate starts than late-over flourish.

Then they reached the crescendo in the T20s. Sharma kept on scoring prolifically, Kohli found a sixth gear. And a change in bowling personnel gave Dhoni the ammo he had sought at the beginning of the tour. Suddenly, the travails of 2015 seem far away.

STATS: Kohli breaks record

But Dhoni, rather than soaking in the honour of being the first Indian skipper to win two series in Australia, sees the bigger picture. “It’s more about how the team is looking rather than looking at it just as a captain. It’s more important to look at the bigger picture. What looks good is Jasprit Bumrah as a player with potential. He’s looking really good and even today (Sunday) he bowled the yorkers well. And I’ve always said that to be successful in the shorter format you have to execute the yorkers. Whether you choose to bowl it or not is up to you, but if you don’t have that option, then definitely at some point of time, you will be under pressure,” he pointed out.

That seasoned hands Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina re-asserted their stakes with timely cameos give India an assurance it had lacked hitherto. And Dhoni aptly summed up their show: “I don’t think so many runs have been scored by batsmen in eight back-to-back matches. It shows they are hungry for runs. They want to score in every match. We emphasise that if you are in good form you have to finish the games off. The first 50 runs are for yourself, the rest are for the team. Yes we lost ODIs 4-1 and won the T20s 3-0, but we know that when we come here the next time not only will we look forward to it as a team, but the spectators will look forward to us too because over the eight matches we have entertained them,” he pointed out.

Focus on T20 WC

The winning feeling has yet to sink in, but the focus will invariably shift to preparing the T20 World Cup. Bowling would still be a slight concern, though the extra fielder outside the 30-yard circle cushioned them in the T20s. “The bowling department was a bit of concern, not the spinners, but the medium pacers. Even in the ODIs, there were lot of instances where at times you feel a bit helpless as to what could be done at that point of time. Because execution is something that is very important. But at the same time, I would like to say that in this T20 format, they get that extra fielder outside and they know that the batsmen are looking to go after them to they can use variations from the start,” Dhoni said.

The bowling, as of now, looks settled and India will have further opportunities to experiment in the three-match T20 series against Sri Lanka, followed by the Asia Cup in Bangladesh. He hinted there could be one or two changes before he chalks down the eleven for the T20 World Cup, but it’s less likely that there would be any radical shifts. And after a long time, they will return home from Down Under ot battered, but with heads held high.

India rest in-form Virat Kohli for three-match T20I series against Sri Lanka

Virat Kohli stole the show in the recently concluded three-match T20I series against Australia. (Source: AP)

India are resting batting mainstay Virat Kohli for the three 20-over matches against Sri Lanka this month with an eye on the Twenty20 World Cup on home soil.

Kohli, the world’s top-ranked Twenty20 batsman, enjoyed a prolific run of form to help India complete a 3-0 series whitewash in Australia on Sunday.

With Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men kicking off their bid for a second Twenty20 World Cup in six weeks, the team have decided to rest Kohli who was top-scorer in the series in Australia.

India recalled Bhuvneshwar Kumar after the paceman sustained a thumb injury in Australia and missed the Twenty20 series.

Left-arm spinner Pawan Negi received his first call-up to the India squad who play Sri Lanka in the first Twenty20 International in Pune on Feb. 9.

Ranchi and Visakhapatnam host the other matches.

Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Ajinkya Rahane, Manish Pandey, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Pawan Negi.