KL Rahul, Ishan Kishan and the whole batting line-up performed well in the first warm-up game against England, while Ravichandran Ashwin, Rahul Chahar, Ravindra Jadeja and Bhuvneshwar Kumar came to the party in the second as Team India’s playing XI looks more or less sorted but they still sweat about Hardik Pandya’s fitness.
Pandya, who last bowled during India’s tour of Sri Lanka in July came with an injury in the second half of the IPL. He missed the first two games for Mumbai Indians and even though he returned to the side after that, he didn’t bowl a single delivery.
Rohit Sharma, who was leading the Indian team in the second warm-up game against Australia was asked at the toss about Hardik’s fitness and he said that he is still far away from bowling but the management is expecting to be bowling fit ahead of their tournament opener on Sunday.
“Hardik is coming along pretty well, but it’ll be a while before he will start to bowl. He hasn’t started bowling, but he should be ready by the start of the tournament. We have quality in the main bowlers, but you need an option for a sixth bowler.”
“Kohli, Bumrah and Shami are resting today. We wanted to bat first as well, just wanted to try and get runs on the board. We want to make sure that we get the 6th bowling option, some options in the batting order as well, we’ll try all those things today,” Rohit added.
Virat Kohli, who was just fielding, bowled a couple of overs in a bid to audition as the sixth bowler and he did quite well giving away just 12 runs in his two overs.
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