Can the match winning duo against Pakistan bring another victory for India?

Rohit Sharma’s India will take on a spirited Netherlands side in their second Super12 encounter of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup at the SCG in Sydney on Thursday.

India won back-to-back series against Australia and South Africa at home ahead of this T20 World Cup campaign and also won a warm-up fixture against Australia. But they got a new zeal of energy and motivation from their thrilling win against Pakistan in their opening fixture of this tournament.

At 31/4, India looked completely down and out of the contest. But Virat Kohli played the innings of his career as he powered his team to a four-wicket victory with a magical knock of 82*. Barring the top-order failure, the batting efforts of Kohli and Hardik Pandya stood out. The bowlers also delivered, with Arshdeep Singh bowling a new-ball spell to remember. 

Even though the top-order failed to deliver in the last game, it can be looked at as an off-day for them, and it shouldn’t really be counted as a major concern to address, considering how they have performed in the matches leading up to this mega event.  But India might be seen making changes to their Playing XI in this contest in order to rest their key players for tougher matches.

The likes of Hardik Pandya and Bhuvneshwar Kumar appear to be the first names who could be rested, considering their history of injuries and how important they are to India’s plans in this tournament.

Netherlands, on the other hand, will be looking to deliver a competitive performance. They can be proud of the way they have performed in this T20 World Cup, fighting hard in the qualifying stage to make it to the Super 12s and then delivering yet another spirited performance against Bangladesh, where they lost by a narrow margin of nine runs. Their bowlers were on song as they restricted Bangladesh to 144 but the batting unit couldn’t live up to the expectations.

Colin Ackermann tried his best to guide his side home with a fighting knock of 62 but he got little support from the other batters to help him through. Max O’Dowd did well in the qualifying stage and Netherlands need him to fire once again in this contest to compete against India.

Bas de Leede was in superb batting form ahead of this tournament but he hasn’t been able to deliver here so far, albeit doing quite nicely with the ball to be the joint-highest wicket-taker at this point in the tournament. If they are to compete with India, they need more than one of their batters to step up and deliver in this match.