India vs Afghanistan LIVE: Cricket World Cup 2023 result and reaction as Virat Kohli 50 leads hosts to victory

Jasprit Bumrah hits his length from the get go and targets a fourth stump line just outside off stump. Rahmanullah Gurbaz is watchful and lets a couple of deliveries go past the bat.

Bumrah straightens up and finds a touch of inswing which brings the ball down the legside for a wide to get Afghanistan underway on the scorecard.

Seeing the swing Bumrah starts to target the pads. He pins Gurbaz but the opener is hit too high and India only half-heartedly appeal for an lbw.

Just the one run comes from the over.

Ibrahim Zadran and Rahmanullah Gurbaz come out to open the batting for Afghanistan. They’ll be hoping to get the team off to a good start and set a platform for later in the innings.

Zadran is a 21-year-old and will not be afraid to play some shots against this experienced Indian team. Jasprit Bumrah is going to open the bowling with two slips in place.

Here’s a look at how the teams line-up:

India: Rohit Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Jasprit Bumrah, Kuldeep Yadav.

Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Mohammad Nabi, Najibullah Zadran, Azmatullah Omarzai, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi.

The big news is that Ravichandran Ashwin has been dropped with Shardul Thakur coming in to replace him.

Afghanistan were beaten soundly by Bangladesh in their opening match so will be hoping to bounce back here. They’ve won the toss so have the chance to set a challenging total for India.

The odds are stacked against them but World Cups tend to through up surprise results. Will today be one of them?

Afghanistan won the toss and have elected to bat first.

“We’ll bat first and give them a good target and we have good bowling,” says Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi.

“We were looking to bat second just because we trained here yesterday and saw the amount of dew that came as well. I don’t think the wicket is going to change too much, we’ll bowl first pretty well and see how we can restrict them,” counters India skipper Rohit Sharma.

Pakistani presenter Zainab Abbas has left India after facing backlash over “derogatory and provocative” social media posts that a local Indian lawyer claimed were made by her against his country.

Abbas, 35, was part of the official digital team covering the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023.

The Pakistani presenter’s departure comes on the heels of an earlier controversy in which Pakistan’s cricket team had not received their visas until the last minute. India and Pakistan share hostile relations and have stopped playing bilateral cricket matches unless they are part of a larger multi-nation tournament.

Sam Curran had no qualms about surrendering new-ball duties to Reece Topley after watching his Surrey team-mate deliver the goods in England’s World Cup win over Bangladesh.

Curran opened the bowling alongside Chris Woakes in the opening-day defeat by New Zealand, and took a wicket with his very first ball as Will Young nicked an inswinger down leg.

But Topley was recalled to bolster the attack for Tuesday’s clash in Dharamshala and the 6ft 7in left-armer was in wonderful form, taking out Tanzid Hasan and Najmul Hossain Shanto with consecutive deliveries in his first over and then bowling the dangerous Shakib Al Hasan with a beauty that crept past the outside edge and hit off stump.

Those early breakthroughs knocked the stuffing out of the chase before it had really begun as Topley finished with figures of four for 43 in a heavy 137-run victory.

David Warner has become the fastest batter to reach 1,000 runs in the history of the ICC Cricket World Cup by breaking a previous record set by Indian cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar.

Warner claimed the milestone in his side Australia’s match against India at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023.

Even though his side eventually lost the game by six wickets, Warner broke the 24-year-old record set by Tendulkar, widely known as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the game.

Pakistan’s Mohammad Rizwan played through the pain to secure a win over Sri Lanka with a record World Cup run chase on Tuesday and the batsman said throwing his wicket away due to cramp would have made their daunting task even tougher for the lower order.

Rizwan hit an unbeaten 131 and guided Abdullah Shafique during the World Cup debutant’s 113 as the 1992 champions chased down 345 to eclipse Ireland’s record of 329 against England in the 2011 edition.

Batting on 83, the 31-year-old collapsed to the ground due to cramp after smashing a six but soldiered on for the rest of the innings to ensure Saud Shakeel (31) and Iftikhar Ahmed (22 not out) did not have to too much heavy lifting to do.

“I’ll give credit to our physio. He gave me some magic, I don’t know what you call it, the cramp fix, it’s a medicine,” Rizwan told reporters. “At the moment I’m fine, but sometimes the pain or cramp comes, sometimes it doesn’t.

“During my batting I didn’t want to give it away, because you know the bowling of Sri Lanka, they have decent bowlers. If I give them a wicket at that moment, it’s difficult for the new batsman.”

Skipper Babar Azam’s early departure left Pakistan in trouble at 37-2 in 7.2 overs and Rizwan said the key to the chase was pacing the innings with Shafique.

“In big chases we’ve had contributions from Babar, everyone knows how big a player he is. Unfortunately, he got out and when he did we had a plan that till 20 overs we’ll bat normally,” Rizwan said.

“It’s this communication and calculation. The way Abdullah built the innings in the beginning, the kind of shots he hit made it easy for us to chase the score.”

Pakistan next face arch-rivals India on Saturday.

Shubman Gill will miss India’s second Cricket World Cup game on Wednesday after falling to recover from a case of dengue which also kept him out of his country’s tournament opener against Australia.

India take on Afghanistan today hoping to make it two wins from two games but Gill has not made the journey to Delhi with the rest of the playing squad.

The BCCI confirmed that Gill would “stay back in Chennai and be under the supervision of the medical team.”