Sourav Ganguly's advice to Team India for T20 World Cup

Mumbai (Maharashtra): Former India captain Sourav Ganguly on Saturday adviced Team India for their upcoming ICC T20 World Cup campaign and said the Men in Blue players should play freely from the start of their innings in the ICC event.

The Men in Blue will play against Bangladesh in their only warm-up game on June 1 at Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York. Ganguly said India have a "fantastic" side in the T20 World Cup and he hopes that Men in Blue will perform well in the extravagant ICC tournament.

"We hope that India will play well. All the players are good. There are so many players in our country that it becomes difficult to select the playing XI. We are spoiled for choices. They have a fantastic side," Ganguly told ANI at an event.

The former captain stated that its hard to predict the top five teams because it's a T20 format and any side can reach. 

Talking about if he wants to give advice to the Indian side, Ganguly said, "This is Rahul Dravid's job because he is the coach. We will just watch and cheer for India. I would just like to say that we have to play freely in the T20 format."

The ICC T20 World Cup will be played in the West Indies and the USA from June 1 to 29. In the tournament, India will be aiming to end their ICC trophy drought, having last won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013.

Since then, India has reached the 50-over World Cup final in 2023, semifinal in 2015 and 2019, the title clash of the ICC World Test Championship in 2021 and 2023, T20 WC final in 2014, semifinals in 2016 and 2022 but failed to secure a big ICC trophy.

India will be aiming to win their first T20 WC title since they won the inaugural edition of the tournament back in 2007 in South Africa.

In the last edition held in Australia in 2022, India lost to England by 10 wickets in the semifinals. India T20 WC Squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj.

(ANI)