Our Bureau
Lauderhill, FL
In ICC T20 World Cup being held in US, India will take on Canada in their last group stage game of the tournament in Florida on Saturday. India is into the Super Eights with three wins in three games and a total of six points. Canada can no longer qualify for the next stage but has done a decent job sitting at fourth spot with a win and two losses in their debut T20 World Cup.
Indian cricket team has played before at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium Turf Ground, Lauderhill Florida, so it is aware of the conditions slightly. Though cricket is not the main sport, the presence of many enthusiastic fans in USA is encouraging for the game of cricket.
Canadian cricket squad includes Aaron Johnson, Navneet Dhaliwal, Pargat Singh, Nicholas Kirton, Shreyas Movva(w), Ravinderpal Singh, Saad Bin Zafar(c), Kaleem Sana, Dillon Heyliger, Junaid Siddiqui, Jeremy Gordon, Rayyan Pathan, Nikhil Dutta, Rishiv Ragav Joshi, Dilpreet Bajwa
Indian cricket squad has Rohit Sharma(c), Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant(w), Suryakumar Yadav, Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Siraj, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Kuldeep Yadav, Sanju Samson, Yuzvendra Chahal.
This game of cricket is happening against the backdrop of strained diplomatic relations between the two countries after Trudeau had accused the “agents of the Indian government” of killing terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada last year. However, India has dismissed the accusations as “absurd” and “motivated.”
Nijjar, who was designated a terrorist by India’s National Investigation Agency in 2020, was shot and killed outside a Gurdwara in Surrey in June last year.