'Pakistan bowlers fear facing Indian batters?'

S Badrinath reacts after Pakistan boycott India clash at T20 World Cup, joking it may be fear of India’s explosive batting line-up.

Following the Pakistan government's decision to have their men's cricket team boycott the group stage T20 World Cup clash against India, former Indian cricketer S Badrinath quipped that the team had made this move perhaps out of fear of facing a dangerous Indian T20I batting line-up.

Pakistan on Sunday announced a boycott of its high-profile men's T20 World Cup group league match against India, a move that is likely to have serious repercussions even as the government cleared the national team's participation in the rest of the global event starting February 7.

Taking to X, Badrinath wrote, 'Fear of facing this Indian batting order? #INDvPAK #T20WorldCup.'

Indian batters are in top form

Pakistan has a terrible record against India in the ICC T20 World Cups. The two teams have played eight times, with the record standing at 7-1 in India's favour.

In the Asia Cup last year, Pakistan were clean swept by a clinical India in a trilogy of entertaining matches, including the final.

Throughout these matches, young Indian stars Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma bullied Pakistan bowlers with their fiery knocks, with Tilak scoring a brilliant 69* during a tense 147-run chase in the final, showing his big-match temperament.

During the recent NZ series at home, Indian batters were in top form, smashing a total of 69 sixes, the most by a team in a bilateral series. While they started the series with the first T20I by scoring 238 runs, they took their domination notches further in coming matches.

Abhishek, Suryakumar, Ishan in good touch ahead of T20 WC 

In the third T20I, they chased 209 runs in 15.3 overs and chased 154 runs in just 10 overs. Saving the best for the last, India scored a mammoth 271/5 in the final T20I.

During the series, Abhishek Sharma (182 runs at a strike rate of almost 250 with two fifties), Ishan Kishan (215 runs in four matches at a strike rate of over 231 with a century and fifty), and skipper Suryakumar Yadav (242 runs in five matches at a strike rate of over 196 with three fifties) gave the T20 WC participating teams a trailer of what could be expected from this power-packed lineup, which also includes Tilak, Hardik Pandya, Rinku Singh, Axar Patel, and Shivam Dube.