He also admitted India could have won more convincingly in the previous match while confirming that Ravi Bishnoi replaced the injured Varun Chakravarthy.
After winning the toss, Shreyas Iyer said India opted to bowl first, believing the Arun Jaitley Stadium wicket could offer some early assistance to the bowlers. India won the toss and opted to bowl first against Afghanistan in the second T20I of the three-match series at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Tuesday. India entered the second match after securing an easy seven-wicket win over Afghanistan in the first T20I on Sunday.
In the first T20I, India opted to field first, with Afghanistan managing 156/8 courtesy of a fighting 64* from Azmatullah Omarzai . Arshdeep Singh (3/19) was sensational with the ball. During the chase, Abhishek Sharma (82 off 32 balls, with seven fours and seven sixes) and Ishan Kishan (42 off 33 balls, with five fours and a six) all but sealed the chase with an entertaining 121-run stand for the second wicket. The chase was completed in 13.4 overs.
Because we could have won by a huge margin, it wasn’t comprehensive.
Varun is injured, and Ravi Bishnoi comes in,” Iyer said at the toss presentation. Afghanistan captain Ibrahim Zadran said they would have preferred to bowl first as well and are aiming to play positive cricket. He acknowledged their slow start in the previous game but said the team recovered well and would look to improve this time. We are playing the same playing XI,” he said.
“We are going to bowl first. You have a fair idea of how the wicket plays, and it gives the bowlers a little bit of an advantage. As a bowling unit, we could have picked up wickets in the middle overs. “We would have bowled first as well. We want to play positive cricket; we didn’t get a good start that day, but we recovered in the middle overs. We will try to do better tonight. India vs Afghanistan 2nd T20I playing XIs: India: Sanju Samson (w), Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer (c), Tilak Varma , Nitish Kumar Reddy, Shivam Dube , Axar Patel , Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah , Ravi Bishnoi Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (w), Ibrahim Zadran (c), Sediqullah Atal , Gulbadin Naib , Darwish Rasooli , Azmatullah Omarzai, Mohammad Nabi , Rashid Khan, Noor Ahmad , Mujeeb Ur Rahman , Fazalhaq Farooqi
