Pakistan team are preparing for the ‘triple’ spin threat that they are likely to face in IND vs PAK on Friday, October 14 at Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad. With the pitch set to give some assistance to spinners during the game, the India spin trio of Kuldeep Yadav, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Ravindra Jadeja can inflict damage to Pakistan’s batting. Keeping that in mind, the Men in Green kept their primary focus of the session was on facing the turning ball. The session included the practice of sweep and reverse sweep shots.
Pakistan batters, including Babar Azam, Saud Shakeel and others played a lot against local spinners stationed at the nets. The Pakistan skipper also faced some pace throwdowns. All-rounder ftikhar Ahmed faced a variety of spin deliveries to prepare himself against India’s lethal spin trio. After batting, Iftikhar switched to bowl his off-spin deliveries.
Youngster Agha Salman then took the nets and faced Zaman Khan and Mohammad Wasim Jr. Babar then practice few more shots before calling it a day.
Notably, the IND vs PAK encounter is expected to be an even contest as both teams are coming into this game is fine form. While Team India defeated Australia and Afghanistan in their first two games, Pakistan registered wins against Netheralands and Sri Lanka.
‘Toss will be vital’
Ahead of the big game, Babar Azam interacted with the press and talked about the playing conditions in Ahmedabad and said that the toss will be vital on the surface.
“Whatever matches we have seen, toss is vital. There was dew under lights last night”.
“Look, here whatever matches till now have been high scoring matches. I think the margin of a bowler is very less. If you are bowling outside the stumps, margin is less for bowlers. So, I just ask my bowlers to just hit the length and bowl stump to stump. Yeah, that’s it”, Babar said in Press Conference.
India Squad for Cricket World Cup 2023
Batters: Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav
WKs: Ishan Kishan, KL Rahul (VC)
Seam all-rounders: Shardul Thakur
Spin all-rounders: Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin
Seamers: Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna
Spinner: Kuldeep Yadav
Pakistan squad for World Cup 2023: Babar Azam (C), Shadab Khan (VC), Fakhar Zaman, Imam ul Haq, Abdullah Shafique, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Agha Salman, Saud Shakeel, Iftikhar Ahmed, Mohammad Nawaz, Usama Mir, Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf, Hassan Ali, Mohammad Wasim Jr.
