Dark heavy clouds hover over NY's Nassau County ahead of India's World Cup opener

Rohit Sharma (Pic: AFP)

Ahead of India's T20 World Cup 2024 opener against Ireland in New York, cloudy weather is prevailing in Nassau County, indicating that rain could play a spoilsport in the upcoming fixture.

India, the inaugural T20 World Cup champions from 2007, will be kickstarting their campaign against Ireland in their Group A clash. The Men in Blue will be hoping to win the whole tournament and secure their first International Cricket Council (ICC) trophy since their 2013 ICC Champions Trophy win.

Ahead of the game, dark clouds were visible in the Nassau County region. With the England-Scotland game already washed out due to rain yesterday in Barbados, fans will be hoping that the rain gods stay away from Team India's highly-anticipated campaign opener.

Indian skipper Rohit Sharma reflected on his bond with head coach Rahul Dravid, for who this tournament will be last as the head coach, ahead of his team's game in a pre-match press conference on Tuesday.

"My equation with Rahul Dravid is very good. He is my first captain. I played under him, He is such a big role model for all of us. I have seen him play when I was just coming into the team. He has shown a lot of determination in his career, taking us out of difficult situations. I try to convince him to continue as a coach. I will not be able to see him go. It has been fruitful working with him, I enjoyed every bit of it," he said.

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On playing in almost alien conditions in the USA, Rohit said that conditions are unknown to all the teams and the team will be focusing on what it needs to do rather than their opponent.

"The conditions are quite unknown for a lot of teams. That is the same for all. You just have to play good cricket. We are not going to look into the opposition that we are playing. The important thing for us is what we are going to do with the bat, ball and field. You do look into their strengths, weakness and team composition, but that is it," said Rohit.

On the slow surface of the Nassau County Stadium where India will be playing their campaign opener and where Sri Lanka and South Africa played a low-scoring match on Monday, Rohit said that he got to know how the pitch was playing through his teammates and the support staff.

"There is uncertainty about the pitches we will play on, the outfield. Maybe the pitch we play on would be a good one. It is about adapting quickly. We know what to do as a batting and bowling group on different surfaces. We will keep an eye on all these aspects and decide what is best combination for us, we have got seamers, spinners etc," he added.

Ahead of his side's clash against India in the T20 World Cup 2024, Ireland head coach Heinrich Malan showered praise on the opponents and said that the 'Men in Blues' are an experienced side.

Speaking at the pre-match press conference, Malan said that they will look to find a few areas in the Indian side that they can exploit.

"We have really had a nice opportunity to prepare and try and control some areas that we feel like we can control and part of that is making sure we do our preparation and our planning. India is an experienced side, which means there's a lot of dots (to connect) and a lot of information out there. So hopefully we can look to find a couple of areas we can try and exploit," Malan was quoted by ICC as saying.

He added that they will try to play consistent and good cricket in the T20 World Cup 2024.

"It's not necessarily just about the World Cup or playing against India or any one of the top sides you know we try and put a process in place and a system and a structure in place that we can play consistent, good cricket. Hopefully, if we do follow the process and we've shown over a period that we can play a good brand of cricket and if we do that well over time like I've said - we've shown then you know we can beat the top sides and then it becomes you know part of what we do as opposed to it happening every now and again," he added.

(With agency inputs)