The India cricket team hit the ground running immediately after reaching Melbourne to prepare for their T20 World Cup opener against arch-rivals Pakistan, while Rohit Sharma was seen practicing in the nets for the Shaheen Afridi challenge.
The high-octane India-Pakistan game will take place on 23 October at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
The Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) official Twitter handle on Friday posted a picture of the Rohit Sharma-led India side training at the MCG for the upcoming match.
“We’re here at the MCG for our first training session ahead of #INDvPAK,” read the caption of the tweet.
As per news agency ANI, Friday was an optional training day and skipper Rohit Sharma had a long nets session as he prepared for left-arm pacers.
Rohit practiced against fast throw-downs from both right and left-handed throwers in order to prepare for Pakistan quick bowlers Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah.
Left-arm pacer Shaheen’s return from injury has boosted Pakistan’s bowling lineup. The pacer had dismissed both Rohit and KL Rahul in the 2021 World Cup match between the two teams.
Dinesh Karthik, Deepak Hooda and Mohammed Shami also joined the training session while reserve bowlers Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur bowled to the Indian batters.
Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, Ravichandran Ashwin, Harshal Patel, Hardik Pandya and Yuzvendra Chahal took a day off.
Meanwhile, ICC has also released a video of “behind the scenes” footage from Team India’s photo session for the World Cup.
India made it to Melbourne on Thursday after spending time in Perth and Brisbane to prepare for the T20 World Cup.
India played two practice matches in Perth against Western Australia XI. India won the first match by 13 runs and lost the second one by 36 runs.
In Brisbane, they defeated Australia in a warm-up game by six runs while another against New Zealand was washed out.
India are placed in Group 2 of Super 12s in the World Cup alongside Pakistan, South Africa, Bangladesh Netherlands and the winner of Group B. India’s opening match against Pakistan becomes even more important because of what happened last year. India faced Pakistan in the opening game of the 2021 T20 World Cup also and lost the match by 10 wickets, their first to Pakistan in a World Cup.
The defeat against Pakistan led to India’s exit from the World Cup in the Super 12 stage.
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