Daily Times

India’s captain Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to bat against the Netherlands in their second game in the Twenty20 World Cup Super 12 on Thursday in Sydney,

Virat Kohli shone with the bat and Arshdeep Singh shone with the bowling as the Indians defeated Pakistan in an exciting last-ball victory in Melbourne over the weekend.

They are heavy favourites to defeat a Dutch team that advanced from the first round and make it two victories in a row in Group 2.

The Dutch then played admirably against Bangladesh on Monday, losing by nine runs.

Both sides named unchanged teams.

India: Rohit Sharma (capt), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh

Netherlands: Max O’Dowd, Vikramjit Singh, Bas de Leede, Tom Cooper, Colin Ackermann, Scott Edwards (capt), Logan van Beek, Tim Pringle, Shariz Ahmad, Fred Klaassen, Paul van Meekeren

Umpires: Ahsan Raza (PAK), Michael Gough (ENG)

TV Umpire: Rod Tucker (AUS)

Match Referee: Chris Broad (ENG)

On Thursday, Pakistan faces Zimbabwe in their second group match in an effort to pick up their T20 World Cup campaign.

After losing the blockbuster against arch-rivals India on the very last ball of an extraordinarily thrilling match at a roaring Melbourne Cricket Ground last Sunday as Virat Kohli played a masterpiece knock, Babar Azam and his men would be looking to get back to winning ways in their Group 2 clash against Zimbabwe in Perth.

The two teams are facing each other in a T20 World Cup for the very first time.

The green shirts have lost only one of the 17 T20 Internationals they have played against Zimbabwe, and that was last year in a bilateral series in Harare. Though Pakistan on paper looks relatively stronger than Zimbabwe, Babar and the company must remain on guard given the highly unpredictable nature of T20 cricket.