Shadab Khan opens up ahead of ICC World Cup 2023

Pakistani all-rounder Shadab Khan talked about the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup which will be held in India in October this year.

Shadab also talked about Pakistan’s preparation and how mentally strong the team is, he also mentioned the team's plans for specific batters.

Shadab, 24, expressed his desire to win the World Cup in India as it would mean a lot to everyone in the team as well as in the country.

"Winning the World Cup in India will be like the icing on the cake... Definitely, whichever team comes will come to win the tournament, but the key is how you as a team play and how you start because we will have to play against every team; it's a great opportunity for all the teams," Shadab said while speaking to a local cricket analyst.

He also addressed the challenge of not having crowd support in India and stated that the team will have to be strong mentally.

"We won't have the crowd support in India. In that sense we'll have to be very strong mentally. The way our players are, mentally strong, I think we'll have a good tournament," he said.

Talking about plans for specific batters, he said that Pakistan have no such strategy.

“There are no specific plans for Virat Kohli. Everyone makes similar plans for opposition batters, which is to bowl in the right areas and hope for the batsman to commit a mistake,” he concluded.

It must be noted that the most anticipated match of the Cricket World Cup will be played between India and Pakistan on October 14 at the Narendra Modi Stadium, the biggest stadium in the world that can gather as many as 132,000 spectators.

Men in Green’s record against the Blues in the World Cup isn’t something one would want to talk about as the former have lost seven out of seven matches against the latter including an infamous semi-final defeat in the 2011 World Cup in Mohali.

Here is Pakistan's schedule for the ICC World Cup 2023:

October 6 - vs Netherlands in Hyderabad

October 10 - vs Sri Lanka in Hyderabad

October 14 - vs India in Ahmedabad

October 20 - vs Australia in Bengaluru

October 23 - vs Afghanistan in Chennai

October 27 - vs South Africa in Chennai

October 31 - vs Bangladesh in Kolkata

November 4 - vs New Zealand Bengaluru (Day match)

November 11 - vs England in Kolkata

The day matches which will start at 10:00am Pakistan Standard Time (PST) while all other matches will be day-night fixtures starting at 01:30pm (PST).

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