Asia Cup 2025: Can UAE challenge formidable India?
What's the story
The Indian cricket team will kick-start their Asia Cup 2025 campaign against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on September 10, 2025. The match will be played at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, starting at 8:00pm IST. This is the second game of the tournament and Team India, who are in Group A, would be raring to make a winning start. For UAE players, this match is a huge opportunity to shine against a strong unit. Here is the match preview.
Match details
Pitch report and streaming details
The Dubai International Stadium is known has a reputation for being neutral, offering equal opportunities for both batters and bowlers. It offers good bounce and carry initially, but could slow down in the middle overs. The toss-winning skipper is likely to bowl owing to the dew factor. The match will telecast live on Sony Sports Networks in India, with live streaming available on FanCode and Sony LIV apps/websites.
Information
Only T20I match between India and UAE
In their only previous T20I match, India convincingly emerged victorious against UAE. The affair took place in the 2016 Asia Cup in Dhaka. Batting First, UAE were restricted to 81/9. India comfortably chased down the total and won by nine wickets.
IND vs UAE
Can UAE challenge India?
The UAE team did decently well in the recent T20I tri-series at home, also involving Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, they failed to win a single game. With India being one of the most feared T20I teams going around, they are expected to walk away with an easy win. However, there have been several discussions going around their playing XI. As per reports, Sanju Samson is likely to be ignored with Shubman Gill partnering Abhishek Sharma at the top.
XIs
Here are the probable XIs
India (Probable XI): Shubman Gill, Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav (c), Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Varun Chakravarthy, Arshdeep Singh. UAE (Probable XI): Muhammad Waseem (c), Muhammad Zohaib, Asif Khan, Rahul Chopra (wk), Harshit Kaushik, Ethan DSouza, Dhruv Parashar, Saghir Khan, Muhammad Rohid Khan, Haider Ali, Junaid Siddique.
Stats
Here are the key performers
While Abhishek boasts two tons and a strike rate of 193.84 in T20Is, Gill owns the second-most IPL runs since 2023 (1,966 at 50.41). Varun Chakravarthy has scalped 31 T20I wickets at 11.25 since his Team India return last year. With 163 runs at 40.75, UAE's Muhammad Waseem was the second-highest run-getter of the aforementioned T20I tri-series. In a recent game against a star-studded Pakistan attack, Asif Khan scored 77 runs off just 35 balls.
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