India vs England T20 World Cup 2022 Semifinal Predicted Playing 11: Rishabh Pant and Yuzvendra Chahal in contention, coach Rahul Dravid says THIS

Head coach Rahul Dravid gave good enough indication that decision to field Rishabh Pant wasn’t taken in isolation as the coach was potentially looking at a match up with leg-spinner Adil Rashid in the T20 World Cup 2022 semifinals.

Photo: IANS

Team India will take on Jos Buttler’s England in the second semifinal of the ICC men’s T20 World Cup 2022 at the Adelaide Oval on Thursday (November 10). All eyes will be on Rohit Sharma’s playing XI for this crucial encounter with Rishabh Pant finally getting a game in this tournament at the expense of wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik.

With Karthik not being able to deliver on bowler friendly Australian tracks, Pant is back in equation. “I don’t think we judge people on one game, and sometimes whether we play them or not is not based on one game,” Dravid said after India’s 71-run victory in which Pant’s contribution was a mere three.

After that, Dravid gave good enough indication that decision to field Pant wasn’t taken in isolation as the coach was potentially looking at a match up with leg-spinner Adil Rashid in the semifinals. “Sometimes it’s just matchups. We need to look at what are the skills we might need against the kind of bowlers we might come up against. So a lot of things go into these kind of decisions,” said Dravid.

He also firmly reiterated that team management had never lost faith in Pant. “Yeah, in a sense it’s not that we ever lost confidence in Rishabh. We've got confidence in all of our 15 players who play here. It’s only 11 guys who can play, and it depends on the combinations that you have. The very fact that they are here and they’re part of the World Cup means that we have a lot of confidence in them. It means that anytime they can be called on to play in the XI.

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"Yes, you can only play 11 at a time and some people sometimes miss out and don’t have to play, but again, Rishabh is someone that as a lot of you would have been seeing, has been travelling with us. He’s been batting a lot in the nets, he’s been hitting a lot of balls, doing a lot of fielding practice and sort of keeping practice and keeping himself ready. The opportunity came for us today (Sunday) to give him an opportunity,” Dravid reasoned.

Dravid said that skipper Rohit Sharma intentionally took batting after winning toss as they wanted to defend looking at the semifinal in Adelaide. “Couple of the things that we did want to achieve was to try and bat first if we got the opportunity. Obviously, we needed to win the toss for that. Just because, honestly we had bowled first against Pakistan when we came here, we just wanted to experience what it was to sort of set a score in these kind of conditions," Dravid added.

Yuzvendra Chahal to replace Axar Patel?

Dravid is not the one to give away playing eleven but said he would go into the game with an open mind considering shorter dimensions of the Adelaide Oval. Asked about trying out Yuzvendra Chahal, Dravid said: “Like I said earlier, I think we have a completely open mind about everyone in our 15. We believe anybody who comes into the 15 will not potentially make us weaker, the kind of squad we've picked.”

Dravid will take a call after seeing the Adelaide track as Bangladesh versus Pakistan saw spinners playing a major role. “Again, we’ll have to go there and see. I watched some of the games today and I know the tracks were slow and they gripped and they turned a bit. We might be playing on a completely new strip in Adelaide, and the strip we played with against Bangladesh, to be honest, did not spin. It was, again, a different kind of wicket, and it was played at Adelaide, as well,” Dravid added.

India’s Predicted Playing XI vs England for T20 World Cup 2022 semifinal

Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel/Yuzvendra Chahal, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami