A legend playing his last World Cup, and his disciple playing his first World Cup will face each other in the last league of their teams. Malinga and Bumrah have played a lot for Mumbai Indians, and Bumrah learned a lot from Malinga about bowling yorkers after yorkers. It will be a treat for fans to watch them bowling against each other.
India, already qualified for the semis would be looking to win the match so that they can top the points table and hope South Africa to beat Australia. That would help them to play New Zealand in the semis, a weaker team than the host nation England. But, if you want to win the World Cup, you have to beat every good team in the competition.
Sri Lanka has nothing to lose, but they have a chance to end the tournament on a good note, beating India would give a lot of confidence to this inexperienced team. Malinga is playing his last World Cup match, and this should motivate the team to win the game for him.
A bright sunny day is expected for the day at Leeds.
Players to watch out
Rohit Sharma has scored 2 of his 3 ODI double hundreds against Sri Lanka and the kind of form he is in; there could be another double coming up. Rohit (544) also must be eyeing to surpass Tendulkar’s record of most runs (673) in a World Cup edition.
Bumrah has not taken a lot of wickets, but his accurate bowling helped other Indian bowlers to pick wickets. He is also on the verge of taking 100 ODI wickets for India.
India v Sri Lanka in ODIs:
Overall: Matches 158, India Won 90, Sri Lanka Won 56, Tied 1, No Result 11
World Cup: Matches 8, India Won 3, Sri Lanka Won 4, No Result 1
Recent Form (most recent first): India W L W W W, Sri Lanka W L W L NR
ICC Rankings: India (2), Sri Lanka (8)
Upcoming Records:
Rohit Sharma has scored 874 runs in World Cup and needs 126 more to become the fastest player to reach the 1,000 runs milestone in World Cup. Rohit has played 15 innings so far while Tendulkar and AB de Villiers took 20 innings each.
Jasprit Bumrah has taken 99 wickets and needs one more to reach the 100 wickets milestone in ODIs.
Squads:
India: Virat Kohli (capt), Jasprit Bumrah, Yuzvendra Chahal, Shikhar Dhawan, MS Dhoni (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Kedar Jadhav, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Vijay Shankar, Rohit Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav.
Sri Lanka: Dimuth Karunaratne (capt), Avishka Fernando, Suranga Lakmal, Lasith Malinga, Angelo Mathews, Jeevan Mendis, Kusal Mendis (wk), Kusal Perera (wk), Thisara Perera, Nuwan Pradeep, Dhananjaya de Silva, Milinda Siriwardana, Lahiru Thirimanne, Isuru Udana, Jeffrey Vandersay.