Colombo, Feb 10 (IANS) USA won the toss and elected to field against Pakistan in the Group A match here at the Sinhalese Sports Club on Tuesday.
Pakistan have momentum after winning the tournament opener against the Netherlands on Saturday by three wickets in a close match. Meanwhile, the USA experienced a 29-run loss against defending champions India in their first game and are seeking their first victory in this tournament.
The earlier match between Pakistan and the United States was a major upset in T20 World Cup history. At the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024, Pakistan were surprisingly defeated by the USA, one of the tournament’s co-hosts, during a group-stage game at Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas.
That, notably, has been the only meeting between the two sides as the American team holds an edge over the Men in Green. The USA, however, arrive confidently despite being underdogs. They challenged India strongly in their first match and will gain confidence from that performance.
Winning the toss, USA skipper Monank Patel said, “Looks like a good batting track and there’s a consistent breeze here, so once we know the target, it will be easy for us to chase it down. We have two changes. Ali Khan is still injured, so Adil comes in place of him. Sai misses out and Jahangir comes in. I think we played a lot of good cricket. There were a lot of positives from that game. One thing we discussed is that when we want to win against good teams, it’s important that we do well with both bat and ball. So the focus will be doing well in both departments in this game. We had a great game. First time playing against Pakistan, and the way we played was great to see. Everyone gave their effort, and we want to take confidence and motivation from that game and do well today.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan skipper Salman Ali Agha said, “We’ve got one change. Usman Tariq is playing. Salman Mirza is unfortunately missing out. We wanted to give Usman a game. I think he’s a match-winner and a trump card for us, so we want to use him. I think we all know there are things we need to improve. We’ve sat down and talked about that, and I’m hoping we’ll be much better today. We’ve been playing really good cricket over the last few months, and we just want to continue playing good cricket every single day.”
Playing XIs:
Pakistan XI: Sahibzada Farhan, Saim Ayub, Salman Agha (c), Babar Azam, Usman Khan (wk), Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Faheem Ashraf, Shaheen Afridi, Usman Tariq, Abrar Ahme
USA XI: Andries Gous (wk), Shayan Jahangir, Monank Patel (c), Milind Kumar, Shubham Ranjane, Sanjay Krishnamurthi, Harmeet Singh, Mohammad Mohsin, Shadley van Schalkwyk, Saurabh Netravalkar, Ehsan Adil
–IANS
vi/
