Shivam Dube, left, captain Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik Pandya (AP Photo)

AHMEDABAD: The T20 World Cup has entered the Super 8 stage. The tournament, designed to soothe commercial nerves by pre-seeding teams, has lost some of its organic charm along the way. The finalists from the last edition, India and South Africa, have reached Ahmedabad for a fresh bout. Unlike second rounds of World Cups in other sports, they have had the luxury of planning for this day, at this venue, since the ICC released the fixtures in late Nov. All they had to do was avoid an upset against Associate and lower-ranked teams in the first fortnight of the tournament. Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Now that both sides have had at least one scare in the group stage, they will turn up on Sunday evening in front of a packed crowd with little room for excuses and an unforgiving weight of expectations. The tournament is in its ‘no let-up zone’. “If I am in that situation (to decide tournament fixtures), I will definitely try and tweak it,” was India captain Suryakumar Yadav’s honest confession on the teams being pre-seeded. The financial scars from the ODI World Cups in 2003 and 2007 still haunt the caretakers of the sport. In trying to guard against that, the format has reduced the element of surprise in a global event.

The familiarity factor Familiarity with conditions and opponents will be the last of the concerns in either camp, having played each other India barely a couple of months ago. South Africa, for instance, come into this match having already played three matches at this venue with another to go after Sunday. “I think almost all the players have played N number of games in Ahmedabad. Even the Indian team has played a lot of games here. It’s going to be a good 50-50 competition,” Surya stated on match eve. But he was also prompt to mention that the overseas players’ exposure to franchise has anyway negated that home advantage to a great extent. “We know what teams we are playing. And we also had a good number of days in between previous games. So, we got good time to prepare for every team,” Surya highlighted the benefits of being pre-seeded. South Africa wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock suggested this familiarity could be a double-edged sword. “That’s what’s going to make for quite a good game tomorrow because we’ve played against each other quite a bit over the last two months. And to be honest the teams haven’t really changed much. We’ve played against each other a lot in the IPL. So, it’s just a matter of being out there, who crumbles under pressure first,” De Kock claimed.Treading cautiously Surya, since the beginning of the campaign, has never denied the pressure of playing a World Cup at home, let alone defending the title. For once, since becoming India’s T20I captain, he eschewed his characteristic quips in media briefings on Saturday evening. “I never said we don’t have any fear. I only said that we are not worried about anything,” he firmly corrected the media. He didn’t deny whispers about the law of averages catching up with India’s rampaging run in ICC white-ball tournaments in the last two years. Neither did he downplay the fact that the collapse against USA at the top of the tournament had shaken the core strategy of the team. That jailbreak in Mumbai grounded Surya’s high-flying bunch of T20 hitmen. “Since that USA game, we have not been thinking too much about how we plan to start our Super 8 campaign. We started thinking more about the next day, taking one step at a time. There will be pressure. If there is no pressure, there won’t be any fun in playing this game,” Surya stated. The black soil pitch South Africa deflated Indian cricket’s ego, sweeping the two-Test series in India in Nov. They bare open India’s fragility against the turning ball, which has interestingly continued to dominate discussions even during this World Cup. De Kock was blunt in mentioning that he has seen no turn at this venue in the three previous games. On Sunday, the curators will roll out the 22-yard surface made of black soil. The red-soil pitches have stayed under the lush green layer of grass. TOI understands that the team had identified that playing on a red-soil pitch, which usually offers better bounce than a black-soil pitch, in the second Test in Guwahati worked in favour of the South Africans. The murmurs suggested that the SENA teams are much more comfortable with greater bounce even if the pitch took turn or played slow. The Indian team has practiced on black soil pitches at the centre square here for two days. Surya has entered the most crucial week of his captaincy career. The preparations could not have been any better. Now, as De Kock said, it’s down to who blinks first!

Ahmedabad: India may have ended the league phase of the World Cup unbeaten, but there are a few glitches they need to iron out before taking on much stronger sides in the Super 8 stage. India’s catching has been below par, but the most glaring shortcoming has been their batters’ failure to dominate spin, a concern that has also contributed to their home Test defeats in recent years. Two major reasons India have been bogged down by rival spinners—especially off-spinners—have been the presence of so many left-handers in the lineup and the poor form of explosive opener Abhishek Sharma, who has registered three consecutive ducks.

So far in the tournament, India have faced 42 overs of spin, scoring 315 runs at a run rate just above seven. Spinners have already accounted for 15 Indian wickets. On Wednesday, Dutch off-spinner Aryan Dutt returned figures of 2/19 in four overs. Thriving on some fine spells by their spinners, Associate teams like the USA and the Netherlands have given India a scare before eventually going down. India’s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate acknowledged that teams were targeting them with finger spin, particularly given that the Men in Blue have several left-handers in the lineup. The entire top three (Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, and Tilak Varma) are left-handed, while Shivam Dube, Rinku Singh, and Axar Patel add to that count. “The Dutch guys took pace off the ball a lot of the time. And obviously teams are bowling a lot of finger spin to us, with so many left-handers in our lineup. That is a challenge. It has made it easier for the opposition. We don’t have many options. We’ve got Sanju sitting on the side,” ten Doeschate said. It is a problem area India need to address before their Super 8 opener against South Africa here on Sunday. The Proteas boast quality spin options in captain Aiden Markram, George Linde, and Keshav Maharaj. Even West Indies and Zimbabwe—the other teams in their group—are well stocked in the spin department and pose a threat that cannot be ignored. The Windies, as they showed in their league-stage match against England at the Wankhede Stadium, have an effective spin trio in Gudakesh Motie, Akeal Hosein, and Roston Chase. Zimbabwe’s four-pronged spin attack of Sikandar Raza, Ryan Burl, Graeme Cremer, and Wellington Masakadza can also spring a surprise. Ten Doeschate pointed out that it was finger spin that was troubling India’s usually aggressive batters. “I’d say finger spin (is the problem). If you take the combined figures, Pakistan bowled 14 overs of finger spin in the last game and, off the top of my head, it was something like 4/78. So it’s not a great number. Colombo was a particularly difficult wicket. The numbers against the Netherlands improved towards the back end. But again, Dutt bowling four overs for what he did was a big challenge,” he said, adding that bigger grounds had increased India’s woes. “I think these two venues in particular—with a bigger boundary here and obviously a slower wicket in Colombo—exaggerate that. But it’s something we’re going to have to focus on. With the amount of finger spin we’re going to get in the next three games, it’s going to be important that we dominate that phase of the game,” he added. Ten Doeschate felt that India’s batters have also looked vulnerable because the league-stage wickets have offered some assistance to spinners. “It’s not a sudden thing. The wickets we’ve played bilateral series on over the last 18 months have been really good batting tracks. Then, as soon as you come to a wicket that offers a bit of hold, it becomes a challenge. “So it might look like a short-term issue. On better wickets, you won’t see it—you can hit through the ball with more confidence. But the point is we need plans for wickets that do hold and where the boundaries are bigger. We need a clear game plan to deal with that threat,” he said. Given all the talk of ‘intent’ and a ‘fearless’ approach in T20Is, India’s post-Powerplay drop in run rate has also been very surprising.