Ahead of India's opening match against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup, former India batter VVS Laxman has predicted his playing XI for the Virat Kohli-led side for the high-octane clash on October 24.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
While picking his team, Laxman gave a miss to a few usual names and came up with a few surprises. Starting with openers, he didn't include Ishan Kishan, who impressed everyone with his blistering knock in their warm-up match against England.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Instead, the former cricketer went with experienced pair of KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma as his openers.
\r\n"They [India] are spoilt for choices. But I will go with Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul to open. No. 3 will be Virat Kohli, No. 4 will be Suryakumar Yadav, No. 5 Rishabh Pant, No. 6 Hardik Pandya, No. 7 will be Ravindra Jadeja, No. 8 will be Bhuvneshwar Kumar, No. 9 will be Bumrah," Laxman told Star Sports.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
For numbers 10 and 11, the cricketer-turned-commentator decided to go with Varun Chakravarthy and Rahul Chahar.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Interestingly, he did not include Ravichandran Ashwin in his playing XI. The off-spinner had a good match against England and Australia as he managed to pick two wickets and also had a decent economy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
"No. 10 and No. 11 will be two spinners, Varun Chakravarthy and Rahul Chahar," he said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Justifying his line-up, Laxman backed top seven batters to score plenty of runs. "It's a long tail but I will back the top seven to get the bulk of the runs," he said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Notably, the ICC events are the only opportunity for the arch rivals India and Pakistan to play against each other on a cricket field as the two countries have not played bilateral cricket since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008.<\/p>\r\n\r\n