Pitch and weather: Out of five matches in Melbourne so far in this World Cup, only the first one was unaffected by rain. The last three were washed out and the one before that, between England and Ireland, was curtailed. Luckily, there’s no forecast for rain on Sunday. Given it will be a fresh pitch, expect some help for seamers, but the batters should enjoy the ball coming onto the bat.
India vs Zimbabwe Highlights today. 42nd Match, Group 2 (N), Melbourne Cricket Ground, Sunday 6-11-2022, ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022.
Toss: India will bat first.
Rohit Sharma: “It’s the preference of the team, nothing to do with the pitch. Pitch looks good. We wanted to give our bowlers a chance to defend a score.” Rishabh Pant is in for Dinesh Karthik. “Rishabh is the only guy who hasn’t played a single game, including the practice games. We wanted to give him a game before the semi-finals.”
Craig Ervine says he’s happy to bowl first. “We had some fielding sessions yesterday under lights, and it seemed like there was some dew. If that happens tonight, it could help us.”
Wellington Masakadza and Tony Munyonga in for Milton Shumba and Luke Jongwe. “We felt we hadn’t been using our pace resources fully in the previous matches, so we decided to go with the extra spinner,” Ervine says, explaining the left-arm orthodox spinner Masakadza’s inclusion. It’ll be interesting to see if he bowls inside the powerplay.
India team: 1 KL Rahul, 2 Rohit Sharma (capt), 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Suryakumar Yadav, 5 Rishabh Pant (wk), 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Axar Patel, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Arshdeep Singh.
Zimbabwe team: 1 Wesley Madhevere, 2 Craig Ervine (capt), 3 Regis Chakabva (wk), 4 Sean Williams, 5 Sikandar Raza, 6 Tony Munyonga, 7 Ryan Burl, 8 Tendai Chatara, 9 Richard Ngarava, 10 Wellington Masakadza, 11 Blessing Muzarabani.
Head to Head In T20I’s: 7
India Won: 5
Zimbabwe Won: 2
India T20I Rankings: 1st
Zimbabwe T20I Rankings: 11th
ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 Points Table
Form guide
(last five completed T20I’s, most recent first)
India WLWWL
Zimbabwe LLWWL
Match Timings: 08:00 AM GMT | 07:00 PM Local
Umpires – Richard Kettleborough, Rod Tucker
TV Umpire – Aleem Dar
Match Referee – David Boon
Reserve Umpire – Chris Brown
Match number – T20I no. 1873
