India has won all their World Cup matches, whereas, UAE is still looking for their first victory in the World Cup. The two matches, one against Pakistan and the other against South Africa have suddenly put India in the position to retain the World Cup. The opening match of India saw them defeating their arch rivals, Pakistan. They not only defeated Pakistan, they destroyed them. This had set the tone. In their second encounter, in which they played against the tournament favourites South Africa, they routed them. The performance came as a shock to everyone.
Right time for experiments?
The Indian team’s performance against South Africa has not only boosted the confidence of the players, but also the supporters. The team had a disastrous ODI and Test series in Australia. It seemed that everything was going against them- the batsmen were not performing, the bowlers were lacking discipline. Since then the team did a complete turnaround.
Both the wins have already put India at the top of Pool B. With their third match against UAE, India might look to change their line-up to test their bench strength.
As far as UAE is concerned, this is their second World Cup appearance, the first being in 1996. The odds are stacked-up pretty high against UAE for them to win against India. Although, they did show some spark in their match against Zimbabwe, their chances of qualifying for the quarter finals are pretty slim.
With the probability of only 10 teams participating in the next edition of the World Cup, the Associate Nations are not happy about it. UAE’s coach Aaqib Javed even targeted the last three ranked Full Member nations and their performance in the last decade. He might have a point, since a couple of Associate Nations have shown what they can do to the top ranked-teams. ICC’s decision to include only the Full Members in the next edition of the World Cup has drawn flak from most of the Associate Nations.
The India vs UAE match will be very important from latter’s point of view. For India, it might just be another practice match, but for UAE it will be a match to prove a point to the governing body.
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