Asia Cup: Out of sorts India face tricky Afghanistan

The Indian team hasn't performed to its full potential in the Super 4 stage and lack of resources and poor team selection can also be blamed for back-to-back demoralising defeats against Pakistan and Sri Lanka. What ails the current Indian team is lack of flexibility in its planning and perhaps a few fingers will be pointed at head coach Rahul Dravid. It seems that Dravid is wary of taking a few hard calls when it comes to team selections as the team does not seem to have a Plan B in its armoury.

In this backdrop, an Afghanistan team with some top quality T20 players like Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Zadran, Mohammed Nabi, Hazratullah Zazai and the exciting Rahamanullah Gurbaz can really set the cat amongst pigeons. This is a team that can chase down a targets in the 170-odd range with its power hitters and can also restrict opposition to manageable totals with leader of the attack Rashid intimidating the opposition. What goes against them as a team is collective inexperience of not playing the bigger cricketing nations regularly.

However T20 is one format where an individual performance can decisively tilt the scales. Afghanistan team has many such players who can upset the applecart. As far as India is concerned, the head coach and captain Rohit Sharma haven't yet showed any inclination to change the batting order and check out other options.

It would be interesting to see if Dinesh Karthik is brought back for the final game in place of Rishabh Pant or Deepak Hooda. Hooda, who batted at No. 7 wasn't given an over to bowl and the skipper defended the move by stating that presence of two rampaging Sri Lankan opener (Pathum Nissanka and Kusal Mendis) didn't allow him to introduce the Baroda man into the attack.