T20 World Cup 2024: Rain threatens to wash away Indo-Canada clash

Lauderhill: Team India flew into the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Thursday afternoon for their final T20 World Cup league game against Canada on Saturday. It was a wet landing. 

According to sources in the team, it was a turbulent flight with a precarious landing process - as was the case with most flights coming into the ‘international’ stadium with a domestic touch to it -  but the team made it without the aircraft needing to hover above ground longer than required.

That’s one predicament dealt with. The other, the more significant one, at least as far as the fans are concerned, is that there is a 70 per cent chance that their game on Saturday will be washed out due to rain.

While the rain relented sporadically on Thursday, it has been raining in Lauderhill since dawn, and it doesn’t look like it’s about to stop. Weather forecasts predict more rain for at least a couple of days before it settles down, meaning the sun will come through prominently once the Florida leg of this World Cup comes to a close.  

If, however, the storm decides to change path by some miracle, the Canadian team will run into another juggernaut, only this one will have a more friendly touch to it. 

A majority of the players, like with the United States of America, on the Canadian side are of Indian or Pakistani origin, and the names which sound Western are folks from the Caribbean. So, yeah, this is exactly like the American situation at the Nassau County International stadium from a few days ago. 

But the Americans, it seems, have already gotten a hang of how to go about taking on the big boys. Besides defeating Pakistan, they were actually in the running for an upset against India.

India played long and managed to come through, but that America made India feel even a little uncomfortable is a feat. That is all Canada will look to do when/ if they run into the Indians on the morrow. 

As for India, it might seem a good chance to experiment with their line-up because they have already made it to the Super Eights, but if recent memory serves right, India are going to stick with the same playing XI. 

That’s how they operated during the lengthy 50-over World Cup at home, and they defended that by saying they wanted the combination to feel settled. 

It’s a reasonable enough protocol to adhere to, but perhaps losing some playing time won’t matter to those who have already been playing in this format. However, giving the others a chance to get around might just help them widen their pool to pick from as the conditions will vary in the days and weeks to come. 

The Canadians are likely to stick to their playing XI for they might be fourth on the five-team table, but they were at least were able to stick it to Ireland, and put on a solid show against the US.

Again, all of these factors won’t matter in the least because there is little to no chance that this game will happen. The weathermen have predicted that there is a nearly 90 per cent chance of rain, and steady rain at that, for the next four days. 

Should the game happen, those are the odds of an Indian victory. 

Teams (likely): India: Rohit Sharma (capt), Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (wk), Surakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Arshdeep Singh. 

Canada: Aaron Johnson, Navneet Dhaliwal, Pargat Singh, Nicholas Kirton, Shreyas Movva (wk), Ravinderpal Singh, Saad Bin Zafar (capt), Kaleem Sana, Dilon Heyliger, Junaid Siddiqui, Jeremy Gordon.