🏏ICC Men's T20 W C 2026: Group A, M 27: India vs Pak at Colombo🏏 - Page 7

India XI: Ishan Kishan (wk), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav (capt), Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Rinku Singh, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah

Pakistan XI: Sahibzada Farhan (wk), Saim Ayub, Salman Agha (capt), Babar Azam, Shadab Khan, Usman Khan (wk), Mohammad Nawaz, Faheem Ashraf, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Usman Tariq, Abrar Ahmed

The media is putting too much pressure on Abhishek Sharma!

Expectations are high, it is not good for the batter.

Cmon India let’s win this!!

As expected, there was no handshake between the two teams as Pakistan captain Salma Agha won the toss and opted to bowl against India, a decision which Suryakumar Yadav did not mind. Pakistan enter the match unchanged from their team against the USA, whereas India make two changes. Abhishek Sharma is back in place of Sanju Samson, while Kuldeep Yadav is added as the third spinner, replacing Arshdeep Singh

Prediction - 154 all out india

The Usman Tariq discussion: Pakistan’s new X-factor

This match has a new centre of gravity: Usman Tariq, Pakistan’s right-arm offspinner with that stop-start rhythm that messes with a batter’s pre-meditation. Pakistan are selling him as a “trump card / X-factor”, and even India’s camp has publicly clocked the problem — Suryakumar Yadav called him an “out of syllabus” question. On the field, Tariq has already shown why the noise exists: against USA in Colombo, he returned 3/27 in 4 overs (econ 6.80), including a wicket off the “pause-and-fire” pattern that trapped a batter moving across the stumps.

The two sides have met 11 times in T20Is since 2014, with the chasing side win on as many as 10 instances; the only exception being the 2024 T20 World Cup game in New York when India won.

Hitman at Colombo

STATS: All three games at Premadasa this World Cup have been won by the side batting first (avg 1st innings 171); in the eight T20Is at the venue prior to this tournament all games were won by the chasing team (avg 1st innings 127).