COLOMBO, Sept 18: India will experiment with different field settings to compensate for their bowling deficiencies at the World Twenty20, captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said on Tuesday, a day ahead of his team’s opening Group ‘A’ game against Afghanistan at the R. Premadasa Stadium here.
The 2007 champions failed to defend a formidable 185-run target against Pakistan in a warm-up game on Monday with their key bowlers Irfan Pathan, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Zaheer Khan, and Harbhajan Singh going for more than 10 runs an over.
India lost the match by five wickets two days after they defeated Sri Lanka by 26 runs with the bowlers led by Pathan doing an excellent job to bowl out the hosts for 120 runs.
“Bowling has always been a bit of a concern. If you compare our batting to our bowling, we find the bowling slightly weaker than the batting,” Dhoni told reporters. “We will try different strategies and different field settings, so that you can complement our way of bowling.”
India have always relied on part-time bowlers because they usually play with seven batsmen and four full-time bowlers.
Dhoni said they could consider a change in the team composition to strengthen the bowling.“We are looking to play with seven batsmen to start up the tournament and that means the part-timers will have to do a really good job,” he said. “Otherwise, as the tournament progresses and if we still find our bowling line is bit too week, we will have to go with six batters and five bowlers.”
Dhoni also said Yuvraj Singh, who has returned to the team after cancer treatment, looked fit for the shortest version of the game.
“He looks fit especially for this format. It’s a short format and he is not 100 percent fit for something like Test cricket right now. But for this format, he is shaping well.”
Wednesday’s game may appear a mismatch, but Dhoni said facing free-swinging Afghanistan was no easy task.
“Wins don’t come easy in international cricket and we are certainly not going to take any side lightly,” said Dhoni. “We have to play our best cricket to beat Afghanistan. They are a good team and have improved a lot over the years.”
Afghanistan captain Nawroz Mangal said his side had come a long way since their World Twenty20 debut in the Caribbean in 2010, when they lost to India by seven wickets.
“We are ready for the challenge,” Mangal said. “Teams like Ireland have shown that the best can be beaten and we are inspired by that. We too want to beat a big team.”
Mangal said it was important to live up to the expectations of fans back home in the war-ravaged nation.
“They expect a lot from us now,” he said. “Earlier our fans just wanted us to match the big sides, now they want us to beat them.”
Teams (from):
INDIA: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Zaheer Khan, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Ashok Dinda, Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Manoj Tiwary.
AFGHANISTAN: Nawroz Mangal (captain), Dawlat Zadran, Gulbodin Naib, Hamid Hassan, Izzatullah Dawlatzai, Karim Sadiq, Javed Ahmadi, Mohammad Nasim Baras, Mohammad Nabi, Mohammad Shahzad, Asghar Stanikzai, Najibullah Zadran, Samiullah Shinwari, Shafiqullah Shafaq, Shapoor Zadran.
Umpires: Asad Rauf (Pakistan) and Simon Taufel (Australia). TV umpire: Aleem Dar (Pakistan). Match referee: Ranjan Madugalle (Sri Lanka).—Agencies