India hopeful of wrapping T20I series as Afghanistan battle for survival

After a comfortable victory in the series opener, Team India will be looking forward to lapping up the T20I series win in Indore as they take on Afghanistan in the second game of the three-match series. In the first T20I, the Men in Blue had no challenge chasing down 160 despite the surface being a tricky one as Shivam Dube starred with a 60-run knock. 

The Afghan batters seemed in control but they weren’t quick enough to get those runs despite a few explosive final overs. The Indian batting unit will probably expect to knit together a strong stand up front which will hand them over the leeway that they would like to have upon their counterparts. The return of Virat Kohli will play a mammoth role in boosting up the morale of the Indian top order as well.

For the visitors, they will have another stern test at hand but as things stand, in order to brave the Indian challenge they will need a lot more than just being decent on the yard..

Venue Watch:

The Holkar Stadium in Indore has played host to quite a few matches and as history suggests, batters have savoured quite an outing on this surface. The average score batting first is 209 in a T20I while the average score chasing is 164. A total of three T20Is have been played here out of which two have been won batting first while the other has been won chasing.

Head to Head

Matches played: 6

India – 5

Afghanistan - 0

Match Details:

Match – India vs Afghanistan

Venue: Holkar Stadium, Indore

Date: 14th January, 2024

Time: 7:00 PM

Squads:

India:  Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar

Afghanistan: Ibrahim Zadran (C), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (WK), Ikram Alikhil (WK), Hazratullah Zazai, Rahmat Shah, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi, Karim Janat, Azmatullah Omarzai, Sharafuddin Ashraf, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Fareed Ahmad, Naveen Ul Haq, Noor Ahmad, Mohammad Saleem, Qais Ahmad, Gulbadin Naib and Rashid Khan.