With pleasant, sunny conditions replacing recent weather disruptions, India and Sri Lanka will look for a full, fair contest to seal a spot in the Asian Games final. Forced to practice indoors by persistent rain ahead of their crucial Asian Games semi-final against Sri Lanka, India wicketkeeper-batter Sanju Samson said the team utilised the weather-enforced downtime to hone strategies, bond through gym sessions, and stay mentally switched on for the semi-final clash against Sri Lanka, set to happen on Thursday.
A warm and clear day is expected at the venue, offering relief to both teams following rain washing out all the quarter-final clashes, according to the local forecast. However, in the event of another weather-related washout, India will automatically advance to the gold-medal match by virtue of being the higher-ranked team in the tournament seedings. With India defending its gold medal in women’s cricket, men’s and women’s kabaddi events, the same is expected from the Shreyas Iyer-led side. Refusing to take Sri Lanka lightly, Samson warned against complacency. “No, every game is very crucial in this format, especially in T20 format, you cannot actually say a team is weaker or strong. So, the conditions play a huge role and the shorter the format is, I think any team can dominate. “I think it is still a very small margin of error and anyone can dominate at any point of the game. So, we have to give each and every team equal respect and play with a great aggressive nature and that is what we have been known for and that is what we will be doing. “So, there might be a lot of unknown factors and it goes for the other team as well. So, both of the teams are coming here fresh and we don’t know the conditions until we go out there and play a proper game of cricket. That is where the fun is – any team can compete against any team. So, we are very much excited to play a really good game of cricket here,” Samson concluded.
So, we will be focusing on the process, how we can play against them tomorrow and the results will take care of itself,” he added.
