Melbourne: If it’s an India-Pakistan cricket match in any part of the world or any format the decibel level rises to a crescendo!
Fans across the world travel many thousands of miles to the venue just to get a feel of the terrific atmosphere that prevails. It was no different at the Melbourne Cricket Ground here at Jolymont street, on the eve of the clash of the titans of Asia in the Super12 stage of the ICC Men’s Twenty20 World Cup to be played on Sunday.
Those who love to be part of this unique sporting event booked their tickets online in January this year; the not so lucky travelled to the venue to catch a glimpse of their favourite cricketers in action at the nets. It’s going to be a full house with close to one lakh people at the venue with the Indian supporters likely to outmumber the Pakistanis.
On Saturday hundreds turned up near the outer net facility of the magnificent venue to see India’s practice session. On friday the likes of Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik – the two survivors of the 2007 inaugural Twenty20 World Cup – had spent good time at the nets, and on Saturday it was the turn of Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya to have a hit.
Even as the main Induan players were giving finishing touches to their preparation, a large group of Pakistani supporters made their presence felt, chanting and dancing.
Sharma who will be playing his eighth Twenty 20 World Cup said of the team’s preparation: “We obviously had a good run after the last year’s competitionin the UAE. We wanted to change a lot of things, and we addressed what went wrong for us in the last World Cup. We wanted to address all the situations, all the problems, all the issues. But we managed to get some of those right for sure. So pretty much standing in a good position right now, having played 35 games. Understood what we needed to do as a team, what we needed to do as a bowling group, batting group and fielding group, as well.’’
Team selection is likely to happen after a lot of discussions between the Head Coach Rahul Dravid, skipper Sharma and the Chairman of the selection vommittee, Chetan Sharma. They have to take call on Pant or Karthik or play both. The talking point has always been about the passionate supporters of both teams and Melbourne will reflect this feature aplenty.
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