Team India began their T20 World Cup campaign with a practice match against Western Australia at the iconic WACA Stadium in Perth. The Rohit Sharma-led team had decided to travel to Australia early in order to accustom themselves to the conditions in the country. Perth has been chosen as Team’s India base venue for the event
Ahead of two ICC warm-up matches, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) organised two practice matches for the Men in Blue against a Western Australia (WA) XI in the city. Ahead of the first game on Monday against WA XI, ex-Indian captain Virat Kohli won the hearts of fans present in the stadium by signing autographs for them. A video shared by a supporter inside the stadium showing Kohli’s noble gesture has gone viral on social media.
However, Kohli was rested for the match as Team India decided to give every player playing time ahead of the marquee event. Even vice-captain KL Rahul did not feature as Rishabh Pant opened the batting alongside Rohit Sharma with fit-again Deepak Hooda taking the number three spot. Apart from the two senior batters, veteran spinner Ravichandran Ashwin was the other member of the 14-member squad to not play the game.
Talking about the match, India had a poor outing with the bat as openers Rohit and Pant were dismissed in single digits. Deepak Hooda played a promising knock of 22 but could not make the most of his good start. Suryakumar Yadav continued his golden run of form and scored a half-century to help India post a total of 159.
India’s new ball pair of Arshdeep Singh and Bhuvneshwar Kumar gave the team a brilliant start to reduce the hosts to 12/4. However, WA made a strong recovery and took the match to a tense finish but Rohit & co. registered a 13-run win.
