Whoever handles the pressure better will win: Virender Sehwag feels both India and Pakistan are high on confidence in 2023 World Cup

Former Indian opener Virender Sehwag feels both India and Pakistan will be brimming with confidence going into their highly-anticipated encounter in Ahmedabad on Saturday, October 14.

Pakistan completed the highest-successful chase in the history of World Cups, scoring 345/4 against Sri Lanka. India also managed to thump their last opposition Afghanistan by eight wickets. This means that both teams are still unbeaten in the tournament with a couple of wins each.

Speaking to Cricbuzz after India's win over Afghanistan, here's what Virender Sehwag had to say about the encounter between the arch-rivals:

"Absolutely, when you have two back-to-back wins, you do get a lot of confidence and you do go into the next game feeling a lot better. Even if you are facing a bigger team, you still believe that you can beat them. Pakistan also are coming into the match against India with a record chase so they will also have high confidence, among the two teams whoever handles the pressure better will win."

Former wicketkeeper Parthiv Patel was also present in the discussion and he agreed with what Sehwag had to say. He added:

"As Viru said, Pakistan are also coming into this encounter on the back of a big win. I was sitting out in the IND vs PAK World Cup encounter, but I know that it is all about pressure and who handles it the best. It will be played in Ahmedabad with 1,30,000 people looking on. It is all about handling that pressure."

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Parthiv Patel hailed India for improving net run rate

Parthiv Patel was delighted to see the Men in Blue close out the chase against Afghanistan in 35 overs. He believes that once teams are certain to win the game, they should push for finishing with a better net run rate as it could get crucial towards the business end of the tournament.

On this, he stated:

"When you are in the early stages of a league stage of a tournament, and if you get in a position of winning the game, you have to look at increasing the net run rate and that is exactly what they did. With 273 runs to chase. I don’t think they could have done it any sooner than 35 overs."

The hosts will now want to make it three wins in a row and maintain their dominance over Pakistan in ODI World Cups.