India will not take Hong Kong lightly: Kirsten

The Indians will go into the game without the services of paceman Irfan Pathan who will be rested because of a side strain. But the Indians have enough bowling resources at their disposal to counter Hong Kong.

The India coach Gary Kirsten warned his players not to get too complacent against their unheralded rivals.

“I am looking for some big contributions from my players in the match. We will take every opposition seriously as this is the Asia Cup and we will play proper cricket and will do the things we need to do,” Kirsten said.

The Indians, seeking to make amends after their defeat to Pakistan in the tri-series final in Bangladesh, have a track record in Pakistan in recent time. But captain Dhoni is not banking on statistics and is willing to start from a scratch all over again.

“We will start our script from scratch in this tournament. We are not going to take any team lightly,” Dhoni said.

“I am happy with the team combination. I feel it is a good opportunity for the aspiring youngsters in such a big tournament. It is also a challenge for seasoned players to perform in it,” he said.

In batting department, Indian team has a considerable line-up with the two left handers Yuvraj Singh and Gautam Gambhir in fine nick, having played some brilliant innings during the tri-nation series in Bangladesh.

Dhoni, however, indicated that he would come up in the batting order to keep the momentum during the middle overs of the innings.

“I will definitely try to bat up the order depending on what kind of start we get. We float our batsmen depending on the number of overs left in the game,” he said.

The Hong Kong coach Aftab Habib, however, insisted his team which has a combination of senior and juniors, would not go down without a fight against their strong opponents.

“We have this advantage that most of the guys are from Pakistan and have cricket in their blood. We know the Indians are a very strong outfit but we will go out there and just do our best,” Habib, a former England cricketer, said.

“India has some world class batsmen but we have some good senior players and spinners in the side and if the pitch does do a little bit it would be interesting,” he added.

Batsmen like Ashish Gadhia and James Atkinson can well change the calculation of the Indians if taken lightly.

In the absence of Pathan, Ishant Sharma will have to take the bulk of the pace bowling responsibility, along with R P Singh. Spinner Piyush Chawla will also have an important role considering the fact that pitches in the sub-continent generally assist the slow bowlers.

Teams (from):

India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Capt), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Manpreet Gony, Ishant Sharma, R P Singh, Pragyan Ojha, Praveen Kumar.

Hong Kong: Tabarak Dar (capt), Afzaal Haider, Ashish Gadhia, James Atkinson, Toby Brown, Hussain Butt, Irfan Ahmed, Courtney Kruger, Roy Lamsam, Munir Dar, Nadeem Ahmed, Najeeb Amar, Skhawat Ali, Waqas Barkat (wk), Zain Abbas.