T20 World Cup | India will be eager to showcase quality against lesser experienced Scotland

“I think the approach today from everyone was different. I wish it was in the first two games as well, but it didn’t happen.”

Minutes after India outplayed Afghanistan to register its maiden win in the ICC T20 World Cup’s seventh edition, India vice-captain Rohit Sharma kind of summed up India’s campaign so far.

Rohit was as nonchalant while interacting with the scribes as he was at the crease at the Zayed Cricket Stadium earlier on Wednesday. The 66-run win gave India a glimmer of hope of progressing it to the semifinals.

The only way India can make it to the knockouts is if New Zealand loses to Afghanistan on Sunday and more importantly, crush Scotland on Friday and Namibia on Monday in its last two encounters and improve its NRR.

While India won’t have any control over Sunday’s result, it has an excellent opportunity on Friday to display Wednesday’s all-round performance against Afghanistan was not an aberration. Notwithstanding its own wobbly form, India will in no way can take Scotland lightly.

Having qualified for the main draw, Scotland has been competitive against most of the top sides in the world, even stretching New Zealand to the hilt before going down on Wednesday. As a result, it will be keen to continue in the same vein come Friday.

India, meanwhile, will be looking forward to continue from where it left in Abu Dhabi and reverse its tide in Dubai. Having lived up to its potential — with the bat and the ball — India will be eager to showcase its quality against lesser experienced Scotland.

At the same time, India will also have to deal with the fear of the unknown. After the washed out affair between these two teams that should have been India’s opening encounter in the 2007 World Twenty20 in South Africa, it will be the first time India will face Scotland in a T20I.

But with the kind of situation India finds itself in, there is only one way for it to approach the game.

“We know that if we lose any game from here on now, we are out of the tournament, so we have to win everything. When you are in that kind of situation, you have to play fearlessly, not think too much about what is happening or what is happening elsewhere,” Rohit said on Wednesday night.

“Decision making sometimes can be a problem, and that is exactly what happened in the first two games. We are a very good team. It’s just that we were not good on that particular day against Pakistan and New Zealand. But yes, today the game we played, it’s pretty much sums it up that this is the kind of team we are. And when we play fearlessly, this is what we get.”

It will be interesting to see if India comes to the party again!

Teams:

India: Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rahul Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy, Ravichandran Ashwin

Scotland: Kyle Coetzer (c), Richie Berrington, Dylan Budge, Matthew Cross, Josh Davey, Alasdair Evans, Chris Greaves, Michael Leask, Calum MacLeod, George Munsey, Safyaan Sharif, Hamza Tahir, Craig Wallace, Mark Watt, Bradley Wheal.

Match starts at 7:30 PM IST.