Saturday, September 15, 2007

What a thriller......! India 'bowl out' pakistan

India and pakistan in a cricket match........can it get better and bigger...The last nite clash at the wanderers just proved that....pakistan won the toss and inserted India in...Lack of match practice showed right at the beginning as india lost early wickets and were struggling to cope with the pace of umar gul who claimed 4 wickets.A well sort out knock of 33 by the skipper Dhoni and quickfire 50 off 39 from uthappa saved the face for the day for India.India finished at 141 for 9.
pakistan set out to chase the target dint do the opening well either. A swinging delivery saw Imran nazir's stump uprooted and India just had the start they were looking...they had to win the match or narrowly lose to the arch rivals iff they had to enter the super 8.Irfan Pathan back into the side after long made the right comeback claiming 2 for 20...Pakistan who wer at one point lookin very comfortable with the target had to make up with the climbing run rate and lost some wickets in the process.Pakistan needed 29 from last 12 balls and the 19 over from agarkar yielded 17 runs making it 12 off 6 balls....Pakistan camp looked relaxed as they had Misbah-ul-haq and Arafat who looked pretty set to take them home...all India V/s pakistan matches in the world cup have gone down to the wire and this was turningout much more than that...pakistan needed 1 from 2 balls at the end and the match was tied at the 4th delivery of the 20th over at 141 with two balls to go...misbah could not score for the next ball and it was right upto the last ball for pakistan to get the winning run...misbah hit the next ball for a run and scampered to the other end of the crease only to realise the ball had reached the other end well in advance.He was run out on 33.The t20 world cup had its first ever tie....
Confusion and chaos prevailed at the kingsmead for a while as it was first heading towards its first bowl out....nor had the players taken part in such an event before neither had the officials dealt with it...both the teams had to line up 5 bowlers to hit the stumps one after the other in 5 deliveries ....only the stumps to aim at and hit it...
india took the lead when sehwag hit the stumps..arafat from pakistan missed it...it was 1-0....
.
Harbhajan then took his stance and as all were guessin where the turabnator would hit,he hit the stump and the pressure was on pakistan to open the account...umar gul for once forgot where his stumps where and missed it by a mile...it was 2-0 advantage India
Robin uthappa was the third to have a go at the stumps and he did precisely that...his acknowledgement to the crowd was worth a watch...now the onus was on pakistan to hit the stumps in the remaining 3 chances...and pakistan did what they are usually associated with "consistantly inconsistant".Afridi too missed the stumps and the scoreline read 3-0...India won the match though not in cinventional way but definately the one they'll remember for long...India still maintain their winning streak against Pakistan at the world cup...India wil have to bat well further on as their next meeting would be against the kiwis...a good match to remember for some time...now that most minnows except bangladesh are out of the tournament it''ll only get exciting to watch...get ready for many more close encounters...

No comments:

Post a Comment