Dubai, Sep 8 (IANS) Opener KL Rahul is captaining India instead of normal commander Rohit Sharma as Afghanistan won the throw and chose for bowl first in a dead-elastic of Super Four phase in Asia Cup 2022 at the Dubai International Stadium on Thursday.

The two India and Afghanistan are hoping to close down from Asia Cup 2022 on a high in the wake of crashing out of contention for the last. The two groups won their matches in the gathering stages. However at that point, they lost both of their two matches in the Super Four phase.

On Wednesday, Pakistan got a stunning one-wicket prevail upon Afghanistan at Sharjah, which implied the Babar Azam-drove side found themselves mixed up with the last against Sri Lanka on Sunday, taking India and Afghanistan out of the opposition.

“Left the ground straight after the group talk, had a green tea and afterward took a few resting pills. It was an intense evening. We have played well in the competition; we might have dominated the last two matches. We’ll make an honest effort to play great cricket against a big group in world cricket. Ideally it’ll be another great execution,” said Afghanistan captain Mohammad Nabi in the wake of winning the throw.

India, then again, have rolled out three improvements to their playing eleven from the six-wicket misfortune to Sri Lanka on Tuesday. Aside from Rohit, pace all-rounder Hardik Pandya and leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal also pass up a major opportunity. Supplanting the threesome in the eleven are Dinesh Karthik, Deepak Chahar and Axar Patel.

“We needed to bat first. We need to challenge ourselves as a batting unit. Rohit needs to enjoy some time off, playing consecutive is difficult in these circumstances. In any event, coming into this competition, we had the T20 World Cup as a primary concern. It’s a decent learning for us to play such a competition before the World Cup. We have gained a couple of things from the misfortunes,” expressed Rahul.

Playing XIs India: KL Rahul (skipper), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wicketkeeper), Deepak Hooda, Dinesh Karthik, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Deepak Chahar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Arshdeep Singh

Afghanistan: Hazratullah Zazai, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wicketkeeper), Ibrahim Zadran, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi (skipper), Karim Janat, Rashid Khan, Azmatullah Omarzai, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Fareed Ahmad Malik and Fazalhaq Farooqi