Team India aims to sort out bowling woes

Trent Bridge, Nottingham:

A berth in the Super Eight Stage already in their pocket, defending champions India will look to sort out their bowling woes when they take on fellow qualifiers Ireland in the final Group A league match in the World Twenty20 Championships here on Wednesday.

India has the batting prowess to erect a mountain of runs or scale down any challenging total even in the absence of their regular explosive opener Virender Sehwag, who is injured.

But their bowling -- both at start and at death -- is a cause of concern as they have conceded too many runs in the in the first six overs, with field restrictions in place, and also proved uneconomic towards the close.

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Apart from that, India will also look to go into the next stage with momentum in their favour although Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men have a history of losing inconsequential matches.

Ireland, who humbled Bangladesh to secure their entry into the Super Eight, though love being in such situations.

In their maiden 2007 ODI World Cup in the Caribbean, Ireland began with a tied game against Zimbabwe when the latter needed just 15 runs from the last six overs with six wickets in hand.

Ireland then sent Pakistan crashing out of the World Cup and if this wasn't enough, they thrashed Bangladesh in the Super Eight round to finish a highly successful campaign.

India, on the other hand, have been alarmingly consistent in losing inconsequential matches. Twice in Sri Lanka they scuppered final matches of the series: losing to hosts by 112 runs in the final game having already secured a 3-1 winning advantage.

Then in February this year, they were close to gaining a clean sweep against Sri Lanka only to falter by 68 runs in the final game. As if this was not enough, they did the same in New Zealand being 3-0 up going into the final match.

India will have to keenly watch Niall and Kevin O' Brien, brothers in arms, who have made a habit of turning into star performances for their sides.

Both Niall and Kevin put up an irresistible show against Bangladesh on Monday. Niall scored 40 off 23 balls and Kevin was even better with 39 from a mere 15 balls.

The side also looks up to Trent Johnson to deliver timely breakthroughs. The tall fast bowler picked three for 20 from his four overs to completely wreck Bangladesh on Monday.

The two sides have only met once and on that occasion, two years ago, Indians were the runaway winners by nine wickets.

India: Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Captain), Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Yusuf Pathan, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Zaheer Khan and Praveen Kumar.

Ireland: William Porterfield (Captain), Andre Botha, Jeremy Bray, Peter O'Connel, Alex Cusack, Trent Johnson, Kyle McCallan, John Mooney, Kevin O Brien, Niall O' Brien, Boyd Ramkin, Andrew White and Gary Wilson.