It has not been a good season for Virat Kohli in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 but he repeated his famous six-hit and thrilled fans during the Super 8s against Afghanistan on Thursday. During the fifth over of India’s innings, Kohli took advantage of a short and long delivery from Naveen-ul-Haq and hit the ball straight into the huddle for a massive six. The video of the knock quickly went viral on social media with fans comparing it to his famous six-hit against Haris Rauf during the famous win over Pakistan in the T20 World Cup 2022. On that occasion, he hit Rauf straight into the ground in a similar manner for a massive six before leading his team to victory with an unbeaten knock of 82 off 53 deliveries.
Virat was eventually dismissed by Rashid Khan after scoring 24 off 24 balls.
Earlier, Indian cricket team captain Rohit Sharma won the coin toss and chose to bat.
Left-arm wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav replaced fast-bowler Mohammed Siraj in the Indian national cricket team’s starting XI. India have faced Afghanistan eight times in T20Is and have never lost to them in the format.
“Looks pretty good at the moment, looks like a good track. No grass on the pitch, I guess it’s slowing down. It’s better than New York. We have to adapt to the conditions quickly. We’ve been here for a few days and played a lot of cricket. It’s about understanding what we have to do in such conditions. It’s an early start. Usually elsewhere it starts in the evening. We like playing here,” Rohit said.
Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan said that batsman Hazratullah Zazai will start in place of Karim Janat. Zazai came into the team as a replacement for injured spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman.
“We would have liked to bat first. It’s more about how you play the game in T20s. I am happy with our preparations and how things have gone. We are facing good teams, we need to control our emotions and play our natural game. It helps to get used to the conditions. We need to play good cricket,” he said.
Playing teams:
India: Rohit Sharma (centre), Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (centre), Suryakumar Yadav, Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah.
Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Ibrahim Zadran, Najibullah Zadran, Hazratullah Zazai, Gulbadin Naib, Azmatullah Omarzai, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan (c), Noor Ahmad, Naveen-ul-Haq and Fazalhaq Farooqi.
(With IANS inputs)
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