Venue: Old Trafford, Manchester
Timing: 3 PM IST
The 22nd match of the ICC World Cup 2019 will be played between India and Pakistan at the Old Trafford ground in Manchester. India is coming off a win over Australia, while their last match against New Zealand was washed out. Pakistan, on the other hand, lost to Australia in the previous match.
The Indian team has already been hit by an injury, as Shikhar Dhawan is set to miss 2-3 weeks with a fractured left thumb, sustained during the Australia match, in which he scored a century. This means KL Rahul, who was manning the no.4 spot till now will move to open the innings with Rohit Sharma and either Dinesh Karthik or Vijay Shankar will come in Dhawan’s place in the team.
With conditions in Manchester being wet, there are chances that the Indian team might go in with an extra pacer to take advantage of the dark clouds and the possibility of swing and movement early on. Hence, one might see Mohammad Shami coming in place of a spinner, preferably Kuldeep Yadav, who has looked a bit off color in the matches so far.
Pakistan, on the other hand, might look to go the other way, by bringing in Shadab Khan in for Shaheen Afridi, who has not been in best of form when it comes to the economy column. Apart from that, the overall form of the team has been dismal, to say the least, losing 12 of their last 13 completed ODIs, but it is notable that the win came last week against England. Pakistan will look to take inspiration from that game in which they looked a completely different team from their 105 all out against West Indies.
The problem for them is that their pace attack is no longer the threatening one as it was some years ago, with Hasan Ali not able to pick wickets and Wahab Riaz only bowling fast and going for runs. Amir is their only hope of rattling the top order of an in-form Indian side, all of which have scored runs in this tournament so far.
India Predicted Playing XI:
Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli (C), MS Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik, Kedar Jadhav, Hardik Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammad Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuzvendra Chahal
Pakistan Predicted Playing XI:
Fakhar Zaman, Imam-Ul-Haq, Babar Azam, Mohammad Hafeez, Sarfaraz Ahmed (C&WK), Shoaib Malik, Shadab Khan, Asif Ali, Mohammad Amir, Wahab Riaz, Hasan Ali
