Pakistan succumb to their silly cricket and the Indian self-belief

By Shuvait Koul

Amidst the massive fan frenzy in Mohali, it was the cool and composed head of Dhoni and his men that prevailed in the semi-final against Pakistan. Disciplined bowling coupled with some silly cricket by the Pakistanis saw India home.

One would have thought that after Sehwag gave a rollicking start to the innings, India was looking pretty to reach a score of above three hundred. But Wahab Riaz and Saeed Ajmal managed to pull things back after stage India was in a commanding position at 141 for three in 25 overs. However, on a day when Sachin was dropped four times, something that has never happened in the master’s career before, he went on to play a life-saving knock 85 and after that it was always going to a tough ask for Pakistan to come back into the game.

To add insult to injury, Raina’s cameo of 36 allowed India to post a 260 on the board which was a defendable total on a wicket that was slow and the ball was stopping a bit.

Pakistan went off to a cautious but solid start but once Hafeez got out, Indian bowlers managed to seize the initiative. On a big stage like this, Pakistan needed its senior pros in Younis Khan and Misbah to come to the party but both played a bizarre innings to add to the woes of their team and nor could the swashbuckling Razzak and skipper Afridi bring any hope for a victory with their batting.

The turning point of the match however was the dismissal of the dangerous looking Umar Akmal by the turbanator. Ashish Nehra’s brilliant spell in the death overs put India further in the driver’s seat thus vindicating Dhoni’s stand of choosing Nehra over Ashwin.

Afridi’s decision of not enforcing the batting powerplay around the 40th over turned out to be a huge tactical error in the sense that it was way too late when they eventually had to take it in the 45th over and the required rate had already crept up to 12 an over with just two wickets in hand.

All in all, it was a forgetful day for Paksitan after having done immensely well in the tournament till that juncture. They must be ruing the fact that had they not dropped Sachin four times and performed better in the ground fielding, the result could have been
different.