India, already in Super Fours, take on World No. 20 Oman, with middle-order batters seeking time at the crease and pacer Arshdeep possibly getting a game
Middle-order batter Sanju Samson (left) with India captain Suryakumar Yadav in Dubai recently. Pic/AFP
Oman have played exactly 100 T20Is, but none of them have been against India. That will change on Friday, when the teams line up at the Sheikh Zayed Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi for their respective final Group ‘A’ matches in the T20 Asia Cup.
Oman are already eliminated after defeats to Pakistan and UAE, India are through to the Super Fours following comprehensive victories against those same two teams. Ludhiana-born Jatinder Singh’s side occupies the 20th position in the ICC T20I rankings — only Hong Kong, at No. 24, are below them of the eight teams in this tournament — while India have been perched atop the charts for a while now and are the current T20 World Cup champions. To say that Oman will be thrilled to bits to share the same cricket ground as Suryakumar Yadav’s powerhouse outfit will be no exaggeration.
Outperformed early
More than stage fright, Oman were outperformed in their first two outings by higher-ranked sides. Head coach Duleep Mendis, who has been in charge for a long time, won’t be unaware of how steep a learning curve it will be for his wards against an Indian side that has been focused and self-contained since its arrival in Dubai on September 4.
Oman captain Jatinder Singh
All of India’s bowlers have had a decent run out, so it will be tempting for the management group to get Arshdeep Singh into the mix. The 26-year-old left-arm pacer has more T20I wickets (99) than any other Indian bowler and will welcome the chance to gain first membership to the 100-wicket club. He has been the country’s leading T20I quick in the 14 months between Jasprit Bumrah’s dalliances with the format — Bumrah didn’t play a single 20-over international between the end of the World Cup in June last year and the start of the Asia Cup, a little over a week back — and was desperately unfortunate not to make his Test debut in England after sustaining an injury to his bowling hand at practice in Beckenham in the long gap between the third and fourth Tests at Lord’s and Old Trafford respectively. In an ideal world, India would love to field Bumrah and Arshdeep in the same XI, but given their propensity to bank on spin and their desire to stack up the side with batting depth and firepower, they have been compelled to bench the latter.
It won’t be the worst idea to get Arshdeep to shake off rust; this won’t be a change for the sake of change but with the larger picture in mind.
That same larger-picture attitude should facilitate batting time for a middle-order quartet in which only Shivam Dube (seven balls) has had a hit. Sanju Samson, Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel are all chomping at the bit, desperate to be unleashed in India’s only game not at the Dubai International
Cricket Stadium.
Four games in next eight days
While Oman are stationed in Abu Dhabi, India will make the two-hour-each-way journey on match day as a foretaste of a gruelling business end where they are guaranteed four games in the next eight days.
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