🏏South Africa vs India, 2nd T20I: At St George's Park, Gqeberha 🏏 - Page 4

Shubman Gill: [Series] Very important. There aren't many international T20s before the World Cup. In terms of that very important series. I have played just about 11 T20Is, not many under my belt. I'll be hoping to get some international T20 experience. Just want to be in a good mental space, then it's just about executing the shots, especially in this format. [Pressure] At the end of the day, it's all about bat and ball. It's all about playing for the team. We have such as strong batting lineup, gives freedom for all to play the game. [On the pull shot] I started practicing the shot from the younger days, I started with a plastic ball on a cement pitch. It was my father's idea.

Toss time!

Looks like the rain has stopped. Players seen doing their warmup routines

International games are of utmost importance but global T20 leagues have carved a niche for themselves. The upcoming season of IPL and SA20 would throw up opportunities to promising players to make a mark – and who knows, a dominant run might see them spring up into the national side for the 2024 T20 World Cup. Coming back to this game, conditions would be overcast and that would bring the pacers into play. South Africa would want to catch the visitors off guard before they acclimatize to the foreign conditions. Let's hope the drizzle stops soon and we get to witness a fascinating encounter! The promising thing is that the radar shows that the rain should clear in the evening.

Toss: Captain Aiden Markram has the coin. He win the toss and South Africa will bowl first

India (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav(c), Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma(w), Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Arshdeep Singh, Mukesh Kumar

Rutu was unavailable for selection due to illness.

SKY | India captain: Very happy to be here and happy to know there's some cricket around. We were confused what to do, but now we are very happy to bat first. It's an opportunity for everyone playing this game. World Cup is still 5-6 months away. Just enjoy yourself is the message to the team.

Aiden Markram | South Africa captain: We are going to bowl first, been under the covers for most of the day, so I would assume it would move around a bit. Each game becomes important for us to fine tune things before the 2024 T20 WC, hopefully we can start well today. From my point of view it's about understanding if someone needs a rest. No debuts today.

South Africa (Playing XI): Matthew Breetzke, Reeza Hendricks, Aiden Markram(c), Heinrich Klaasen(w), David Miller, Tristan Stubbs, Marco Jansen, Andile Phehlukwayo, Gerald Coetzee, Lizaad Williams, Tabraiz Shamsi

Mustafa Moudi : "This series is not just good for the preparation of the upcoming T20I World Cup, but also a great chance for the South African players to impress the IPL Teams and attract bids for the IPL 2024 Auction next week !!"

Shankar : "Rain being one concern for this series, more worrying part for SA is their current T20 form with WC within the reach. Given their line-up, surprising to see them losing 4 matches consecutively and given away more than 10 RPO in all of them.. exposing their weak bowling line-up.

Retief vd Merwe: "Must be funny for India to not see one person in the stands ??? They are use to a crowd of 100 000 people " Not fair to say there is not one person in the stand. The white-ball games, at least, are expected to see packed crowds. It's just the rain has put a dampener on proceedings

Shubman Gill: [Series] Very important. There aren't many international T20s before the World Cup. In terms of that very important series. I have played just about 11 T20Is, not many under my belt. I'll be hoping to get some international T20 experience. Just want to be in a good mental space, then it's just about executing the shots, especially in this format. [Pressure] At the end of the day, it's all about bat and ball. It's all about playing for the team. We have such as strong batting lineup, gives freedom for all to play the game. [On the pull shot] I started practicing the shot from the younger days, I started with a plastic ball on a cement pitch. It was my father's idea