Must-win game for India today

Bogged down by top-order brittleness and under pressure after a heavy loss, defending champions India would need every ounce of resilience they can muster when they take on a tricky Zimbabwe in their second Super 8 match of the T20 World Cup here on Thursday.

Winning this contest by a big margin is critical to India’s existence in the ICC showpiece given the beating their net run rate (-3.80) took after the 76-run defeat to South Africa on Sunday. But for that, India needs to fix the issues surrounding the opening and No.3 slots.

Coming into this World Cup, the reigning champions rode on excellence from Ishan Kishan and Abhishek Sharma at the pole position to quell the bilateral challenges against South Africa and New Zealand at home. But light seems to have gone out of Abhishek’s batting after a stomach infection. A combination of dull pitches and off-spinners, who took the ball away from his hitting arc, has reduced the left-hander’s firepower. He is certainly a better batter than his current numbers -- 15 runs from four matches at an average of 3.75 made at a strike-rate of 75.

Tilak Varma too needs a course correction, but of a different nature. One can argue that Abhishek’s lean patch has necessitated Tilak to play a more supportive role to Kishan, who continues to impress with a strike-rate of 193 amid the top-order ruins around him. But even then, a strike-rate of 118 is too less for a batter playing in the Power Play segment as per the modern T20 template. He generally strikes around 141 in T20Is.

The inclusion of Sanju Samson, a right-hander, in top three can be a quick fix, but the Kerala batter himself is not in the pink of form. So, the effect of adding another struggling batter to an already difficult space is debatable. In that context, the team think-tank can ponder over giving a promotion to Suryakumar at No. 3, and push Tilak down to No. 4 to break the sequence of left-handers at the top. Jasprit Bumrah is as brilliant as he has ever been, and in the company of Varun Chakravarthy, Arshdeep Singh and Hardik Pandya, he should be able to blunt a relatively less experienced Zimbabwe batting unit.