India’s captain, Rohit Sharma, admitted on Saturday that his team will face a challenge when facing their archrivals Pakistan in the Asia Cup semifinal Pak vs Ind. On Sunday, the two teams will kick off their Twenty20 tournament campaigns in Dubai, the same venue where India was blown out by Pakistan by 10 wickets in last year’s T20 World Cup, led by Babar Azam.
PAK VS IND | Rohit calls playing Pakistan ‘challenging’
Due to political tension, the two teams only face each other in multi-nation tournaments, and the outcome of their last meeting has been a topic of conversation in the lead-up to the six-nation Asia Cup. Even though this was India’s first loss to Pakistan in World Cup history, Rohit insisted that the team has already moved on.
The warmth between the two teams has been on full display in Dubai, with Rohit going out of his way on Friday to meet a group of cheering Pakistani fans at the practice venue. Since the two countries have fought three wars, including two over the disputed region of Kashmir, the sight of Azam and Indian superstar Virat Kohli exchanging pleasantries is not very common.
“We do talk about our losses, that’s how we improve as a team. That loss did hurt us at that point, but I think it’s been a while since that game has been played,” said Rohit.
“We learn from our mistakes. For now, it’s a fresh start for us and obviously, the team is coming out of playing a lot of T20 cricket. We will not think too much about what happened in October, that was a long time back.”
Squads
Pakistan: Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Fakhar Zaman, Iftikhar Ahmed, Haider Ali, Khushdil Shah, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Hasan Ali, Haris Rauf, Shahnawaz Dahani.
India: Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal.
