Daily Sports News

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.

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.

India wasted the excellent start if got in the warm up match against New Zealand and ended up getting defeated by just 9 runs. Rohit Sharma was asked to open the innings and showed his class with a 36 run knock. His batting caliber could be judged when he his Iain O’Brien for 18 runs is his second over for two massive sixes and a four. Other major contributors in the Indian chase were Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja scoring 45 and 41 runs respectively.

The blow to the Indian batting came when Kiwi captain Daniel Vettori struck twice in his first over with wickets of Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Rohit Sharma. There was some joy in the Indian camp when Raina who played some excellent shots with great running between the wickets. It was surely not India’s day as they could not reach the 171 target even though Jadeja tried his best.

To everyone’s surprise, the bowler in question over his performance in the concluded IPL, Ishant Sharma showed character and took four wickets. He bowled Jesse Ryder for 2 run making sure that Ryder’s poor form from IPL continued in England too. He also dismissed the Kiwi danger man McCullum. Ishant Sharma in the later part of the Indian bowling dismissed Jacob Oram and Styris. The other wickets were taken by Pragyan Ojha and Harbhajan Singh in the form of Martin Guptill and Ross Taylor.

James Franklin scored 27 not out off 10 balls and on-course also hit RP Singh for two successive sixes which were followed by a four. This over in the end part of the Indian bowling certainly pushed the kiwi score. Though India lost the match but certainly it provided the team to make necessary changes to its tournament strategy.

MSD in a post game interview said that the last two over’s of the Indian bowling where they conceded 31 runs were the main reason for the loss. India also missed the services of ace batsmen like Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag. Yuvi was down with food poisoning and Viru missed the game due to a shoulder injury, but they are expected to be fit when the tournament starts. India is now going to play Pakistan in its next warm-up match on 5th June 2009.