Former India cricketer and host of daily cricket show, AakashVani, Aakash Chopra has raised concerns over the form of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Before the World Cup, Pakistan seemed a bit lost as they had a very poor outing in the continental tournament and then lost both their warm-up games of the marquee event.
On the other hand, Sri Lanka had a better Asia Cup outing and also were good in their warm-up games.
But, talking about their opening games, Pakistan defeated the Netherlands quite comfortably while Sri Lanka gave away 428 runs and then lost the game by 102 runs.
Meanwhile, Chopra feels that both teams have some form issues at the moment.
For Pakistan, he feels that their top three are not scoring runs at the moment and they need to step up so that they can have a good outing.
For Sri Lanka, Chopra says that they are missing out on key bowlers like Wanindu Hasaranga, Dushmantha Chameera, and Maheesh Theekshana and they need them back in the squad.
Pakistan won their first game and beat the Netherlands. It was a tough game, but they still came out on top. But the top batting order issue still looms Pakistan, the openers have not been able to fire, and Babar Azam has not been able to turn up lately as well.
Adding further, he says,
On the other hand, Sri Lanka conceded a lot of runs in their first game, even if the pitch was quite flat. We can see that they miss players like Wanindu Hasaranga, Dushmantha Chameera and Maheesh Theekshana- who are absolutely immense for them. So, Pakistan will be looking to settle their account with Sri Lanka as the latter had defeated the former in the Asia Cup.
Pakistan beats Sri Lanka in their second game of the ODI World Cup
Meanwhile, talking about yesterday’s game, Pakistan chased down Sri Lanka’s score of 344 with quite ease and won the game by 6 wickets.
Losing the toss, Pakistan was put into field first by Dasun Shanaka whose side then put up 344 runs on the board and asked the Men in Green to chase down 345 runs.
Moreover, Maheesh Theekshana who missed out on his side’s first game, replaced Kasun Rajitha in this game.
But, he couldn’t produce much in the game and got only one wicket in the game and conceded 59 runs in the process.
Furthermore, Pakistan’s Abdullah Shafique replaced Fakhar Zaman at the top and scored a brilliant century on debut.
After that, it was all Mohammad Rizwan who scored 134 from 121 balls to guide Pakistan to their second victory.
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