With five Asian teams in the World Twenty20, there will be plenty of matches involving these teams. India will take on Afghanistan in one such match on Wednesday, with the match being played in Colombo in the evening.
India, winners of the inaugural tournament five years ago, will be looking to erase memories of their poor record in the recent editions of the tournament.
They failed to win a single match in the Super Eights in 2009 as well as 2010. The team is led by MS Dhoni who captains the side in his fourth World T20.
The Afghanistan match should not be much of a challenge to them but they will have several areas to fix.
The warm up match against Pakistan exposed their weak bowling as well as brought to debate their strategy to play four bowlers only.
On the positive side, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma were in smashing form as both scored quickfire half-centuries.
Yuvraj Singh will look to use the match as an opportunity to get back into the groove after not getting enough chances on the field since his comeback.
With the ball, Irfan Pathan and Ravi Ashwin were amongst the wickets in the warm ups and that could put Harbhajan Singh’s spot in doubt.
For Afghanistan, it is a big moment to break their way through into the ICC tournament. The captain, Nawroz Mangal, knows the limitations of his side and has expressed hope that the team will be able to cope with the big occasion and not put up an embarrassing show.
The team will rely on Hamid Hassan who has been their main star with the ball.
Also a few other players to watch out for include Aftab Alam and Shabir Noori who are young guns having represented the team in the Under-19 World Cup in Australia.
The match starts at 7.30pm local time.
