India vs Pakistan, T20 World Cup 2022 Highlights: Epic Virat Kohli innings leads IND to 4-wicket win in nail-biter

Rohit Sharma(c), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik(w), Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh

Toss is not in our hands. We'll try to post around 160-170. We have prepared well, and we are ready for this big game. We won a series back home, we played a tri-series in New Zealand, so we are prepared. We have three fast bowlers and two spinners.

“We are going to field first. Looks like a good pitch, it's always nice with overcast conditions. Think the ball will swing around a bit. Preparations have been good. We played a couple of practice games in Brisbane. Time to come out and enjoy ourselves. We were expecting nothing less than this, hopefully we'll entertain them. We have seven batters, three seamers and two spinners.”

Rohit Sharma has chosen to field first. “We have seven batters, three seamers and two spinners,” he says amid the utter din at the 'G.

That coin has been wiped clean, Babar and Rohit are in the middle and Ravi Shastri is making his voice boom around the MCG

Well The Rock is giving a preview of the match as Star Sports role their video for it, and it ends with his trademark eyebrow raise. Now that is not something fans of the WWE's Attitude Era in India or Pakistan would have dreamed of seeing back when Sourav Ganguly and Inzamam-ul-Haq were leading these two teams in big Test matches. 

Dropping Virat Kohli was a ludicrous thing to even think about for much of the last 10 odd years but that is exactly what everyone was talking about before the Asia Cup. The former India skipper's strike rate had fallen to an alarming extent and the likes of Deepak Hooda were banging on the door with a century. However, Kohli seems to have got back to his best and somehow, it is with him at the other end that Suryakumar Yadav seems to be at his ballistic best. India have got a formidable batting lineup at the moment to say the least. 

The incomparable Ian Smith and former Aussie captain Michael Clarke are doing the pitch report today. Shorted boundary on the offside itself is 71m long. “Win the toss, I wanna bat first,” says Michael Clarke. He did win a World Cup here so he might know what he is talking about. 

Surya, Suryakumar, Suryakumar Yadav, SKY… he goes by loads of names and nowadays, he has also been bestowed the tag of ‘best player in the world’ by many former players. Babar Azam, however, was careful not let anyone think that Pakistan were too worried about SKY. “We have plans for each player, not just Surya. We have a plan and hopefully, we can execute them properly,” Babar said on the eve of the match.

It is strange to think of Rohit Sharma as a newbie to anything but that is technically what he is here. Rohit maybe the most successful IPL captain of all time and has also led India to the Asia Cup title once but this is the first time he is skipper of the team in a World Cup tournament. For now, he doesn't seem too enthused by how the pitch looks.  

“Flick or drive him towards onside,” says the batting great on Star Sports. One has to remember that this time, there will be Naseem Shah to alternate with Afridi, which only makes this Pakistan attack more potent. 

The players are out there training and looking at them is always indicator of who is going to play and who isn't. Rishabh Pant isn't too active at the moment and so there is a very good chance that he won't be in the middle today. Ravichandran Ashwin, on the other hand, is rolling his arms over so it looks like Rohit Sharma has gone with him ahead of Yuzvendra Chahal. 

Well the stadium is already so noisy that it is playing games with the sound feed of the broadcasters. When does the match start you ask, just under an hour from now. 

Not an official pitch report but Irfan Pathan just said off hand that the pitch looks quite grassy. The two Asia Cup thrillers this year were produced on pitches that helped the fast bowlers so let's hope we see more of that today. 

Indian fans will probably never forget that first over that Shaheen Afridi bowled against them last year. This is how he explained how he got those wickets of KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma. “I had observed that Rohit Sharma struggles against the inswing, at that yorker length. In 2021, most of my dismissals were with that length. So I thought to myself, if that's my strength why not use it against him in the first ball that bowl to him. For KL Rahul, I happened to be standing with Shoaib Malik. He asked me if the ball was swinging, and I said, not much. He asked me to not try the yorker ball but the length ball and it might just nip back in. I tried it and that's exactly what happened. I owe that wicket to Shoaib Malik.”

There have been 11 T20I matches between these two Asian giants. India have won eight and Pakistan have won three. In the T20 World Cup, they have played six and five have been won by India. However, the last match, as stated before, was a convincing win for Pakistan to say the least.

BCCI secretary Jay Shah thought that this is the best time to announce that India won't be travelling to Pakistan for next year's Asia Cup and won't play in the tournament unless it is relocated. Incidentally, he was the president of the Asian Cricket Council when the tournament was awarded to Pakistan. It led to a lot of angry reactions from ex-Pakistani cricketers and is bound to play some role in today's narrative. Among Indians, it is only captain Rohit Sharma who has said anything, stating that it is pretty useless to talk about this in a press conference before the match and that the players will play wherever the BCCI tells them to. 

It may be a strange thing to call one of the biggest stadiums in the world this name but that is what it is looking like at the moment. Word from the ground is that there are clear blue skies up above the 'G so high. 

It wasn't too long ago that India were choosing to conserve wickets as much as possible before making a hot dash for it in the last five overs, if possible. However, that strategy became a confused mess in the 2021 T20 World Cup and since Rohit Sharma has taken over, they have decided to go the other way, smack the leather out of the ball in the powerplay and then settle in, before another round of smacking in the death overs. Pakistan, meanwhile, work best when Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan score big and their method of scoring big, is exploiting gaps and running between the wickets. In a way, they are reliant on the method that India abandoned, and so far they are doing a good job with it. 

Cloudy. Medium (60%) chance of showers, most likely later this evening. The chance of a thunderstorm in the northeast suburbs. Winds southeasterly 20 to 30 km/h: This is what Australia's Bureau of Meteorology has to say about the weather today in Melbourne. This is the lowest chance of rain they have reported in the last four days so that's good news. For now, it is quite cloudy in Melbourne but no sign of rain yet. 

Question marks everywhere, though its more around what combination India can pick than form of the bowlers. Yes, Arshdeep Singh and Bhuvneshwar Kumar conceded runs in the death overs but that was in conditions that weren't too conducive to fast bowling, or any kind of bowling for most parts. It seems almost assured that these two will take the new ball, followed most probably by Mohammad Shami. If India prioritise batting depth, they might go for Ravichandran Ashwin ahead of Yuzvendra Chahal but that decision really depends upon what they see in the pitch. If they do go with Chahal, they might be tempted to go with Harshal ahead of Shami on the basis of the former being a far more effective tail ender. 

For now, there are now injuries to report in the Indian camp, although it has to be noted that the word from the 'G is that Hardik Pandya was wearing strapping on his right knee and seemed to be limping a little bit this morning.  

Shan Masood won't be available to play for Pakistan today, which was probably a given. The important thing is that he seems to be doing fine. For those that don't know, the Pakistan batter was struck on the right side of his head by a shot during a nets session. The latest update overnight from the PCB team in Australia is that Masood’s neurological observations are normal. The CT scan revealed a superficial bruising in the area where he struck, but he is currently asymptomatic. The batter will undergo a concussion re-test tomorrow.

He has scored 801 runs in 23 T20Is this year alone, which includes a century, at a frankly ludicrous strike rate of 184.56. His career T20I stats currently stand at 1045 runs scored in 34 T20Is at a strike rate of 176.81. He is in the kind of form that leads to opposition captains being asked if they have made any special plans for him, as was the case for Babar Azam. 

Babar Azam(c), Mohammad Rizwan(w), Shan Masood, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Haider Ali, Iftikhar Ahmed, Asif Ali, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Hasnain, Mohammad Wasim Jr, Fakhar Zaman