India will be taking on Bangladesh today, in the first of the group-A tie in Trent Bridge, Nottingham. The match is scheduled to start at 22:30hrs (IST) and can be caught live on Star Cricket.

As far as the weather is concerned in Nottingham, it remains to be the same as the rest of England, totally unpredictable. Yet, light showers have been predicted which can interrupt the match in the second innings.

India would go into the match clearly as the favourites but should not consider Bangladesh as a minnow. There are two reasons for the same. Firstly, just about 24hrs back, the clear favourite England, in the England-Netherland match, had been out-shone by the not-so-favourite Dutch. Secondly, Bangladesh is the same team which drafted the Indian exit from the ICC World Cup 2007, although that was a 50-over game.

But, since then, the face of the Indian team has changed tremendously. Just after 6 months from that World Cup debacle, India went on to become the champions of the inaugural T-20 World Cup in South Africa and India certainly did that in style.

Today’s match would be more of a Thinking Captain’s match, as the Trent Bridge pitch behaves quite unexpectedly. Over the years it has been noticed, at times, low scores have been defended while at other times, even big scores have been chased down there. 

Great expectation would be from Gautam Gambhir, who has been the star and actually discovered himself in the previous edition of the T-20 World Cup. Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, MS Dhoni RP Singh and Yuvraj Singh have been consistent T-20 performers for India. Although, Virender Sehwag and Zaheer ‘Zak’ Khan are the most experienced of the lot but are nursing their respective injuries, but, rising stars like Rohit Sharma (remember his knock against arch-rival Pakistan in the warm-up match), Suresh Raina, Pragyan Ojha and the massive hitter Yusuf Pathan would make up for them.

With news of a rift in the team as of now, it seems India may lack that sharpness which is needed to cut through any situations but still, Team India remains to be my clear favourites to retain the cup.