There is no possibility of much change in the Indian team in this match of formality. Cricket is anyway a game of results and statistics, so the possibility of achieving historic individual achievements made this match interesting for the team. While Virat Kohli (Virat Kohli 50th ODI century) has a golden opportunity to make the record of ODI half-centuries. Kohli has equaled Sachin Tendulkar’s record (Virat Kohli will break Sachin’s record of 49 ODI centuries) against South Africa in Kolkata and is now close to scoring his 50th century.
Kohli wants to ignore the outside noise and focus on his game, but the expectations of the IPL audience at his home ground will skyrocket. So far he has scored 543 runs for India in this World Cup. Kohli has scored more than 500 runs in a 50-over World Cup for the first time. He scored 282 runs in 2011, 305 in 2015 and 443 in 2019. Tendulkar, Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma batted in these three World Cups respectively.
Kohli will want to prepare for the semi-finals by giving good batting practice in India’s last league match. After the match against South Africa, the Indian team got a week’s practice. From the team’s point of view, the management would like to see Suryakumar Yadav score runs, who managed to score only 85 runs in four matches. All other leading batsmen have scored at least one half-century. With Hardik Pandya out due to injury, Suryakumar (Suryakumar Yadav wc 2023) got a place in the playing eleven but could not capitalize on it. The match against Netherlands is a golden opportunity for them.
India have registered eight consecutive wins, not counting the fact that Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill have not been able to put together a big partnership in five matches. He added 88 runs against Bangladesh, 71 runs against New Zealand and 62 runs against South Africa but in the remaining five matches he could only manage 5, 32, 23, 26 and four runs respectively. Indian bowlers have performed brilliantly throughout the tournament. Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami and Mohammad Siraj have kept the opposition batsmen under pressure, although Siraj could have done better.
The Netherlands team has some good bowlers like Logan van Beek, Bas de Leede and Paul van Meekeren but the Chinnaswamy Stadium pitch is considered a batsmen’s paradise. Their top-order batsmen Teja Ndamanuru, Max O’Dowd and Wesley Baresi have been seen struggling for runs and the Indian bowlers have found it difficult to score runs.
Teams:
India: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Lokesh Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammad Shami, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishtan Krishna.
Netherlands: Scott Edwards (capt & wk), Colin Ackerman, Wesley Baresi (wk), Bass de Leede, Aryan Dutt, Sybrand Engelbrecht, Ryan Clyne, Teja Nidamanuru, Max O’Dowd, Saqib Zulfiqar, Shariz Ahmed, Logan van Beek, Rolf van der Merwe, Paul van Meekren and Vikramjit Singh.
The match will start at 2 PM IST.