Rohit and Gautam propel India to victory

June 4, 2009

Rohit and Gautam propel India to victory

An Excellent opening stand of 140 between Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gahbir made sure that the defending champions India scored a decisive nine wickets win over traditional rivals Pakistan in the ICC World T20 World Cup warm up game at The Oval on Wednesday.

rohit-sharma Pakistan had a bad start and were 45 for four, with some great bowling and fielding performances by the Indians. First to go was Shahzaib Hasan was bowled by Praveen Kumar on the fifth ball of the first over. Kamran Akmal was next to go with an excellent run out by Suresh Raina with a direct under arm hit on the stumps. Ahmed Shehzad tried to hit Sharma over midwicket by was take by the extra bounce and gave an easy catch to Raina at cover when his score was 25. Next to go for a duck was Shahid Afridi as he went for the big slog and tried to hit it over the straight but gave away a thick edge which MSD did not miss and dived on his right to take an amazing catch. Next to go was Shoaib Malik who was caught by MSD of the bowling of Pragyan Ojha. Younis Khan tried to reverse sweep Harbhajan, but the spinner read it well and bowled on the leg side making it easy for MSD to stump him. Misbah-ul-Haq was the highest scorer of the Pakistani innings and remained not out at 37 along with Arafat on 25. Pakistan could only score 158 for 6 in there 20 over’s. In the bowling front the best effort came from Ishant Sharma, who bowled 3-1-11-1(O-M-R-W).

India came back strongly in reply of the Pakistani score with an amazing knock by Rohit Sharma, who scored 80 runs of 53 balls and was well supported by Gautam Gambhir who remained not out till the end. MSD and Gautam won the match in 17 overs with just loss of one wicket. There were just two sixes in the entire match and were hit by Rohit Sharma.

Also an important thing to note is that although Pakistan has a much better record against India but it has never been able to defeat India in a world cup match. This India continued its 100% winning at the World Cup.