Saturday, April 20, 2013


India prevail over Pakistan in a nail biter

            The 3rd and the last one-day international between India and Pakistan played on 6th January, 2013 in New Delhi finally gave the Indian supporters a reason to celebrate. In a low scoring game, India(167 all out) beat Pakistan(157 all out) by 10 runs to prevent a white wash in the 3 match series. 
            Pakistan defeated India in the previous two ODIs and were all set to clean sweep the series. India won the toss and decided to bat first but the poor batting form continued as they managed a total of only 167 runs from 43.4 overs. Due to lack of form, Virender Sehwag had been dropped from the playing eleven and Ajinkya Rahane was selected as Gautam Gambhir’s new opening partner. But he could not prove his worth as he added only 4 runs while Gambhir made 15. The out of form Virat Kohli also struggled and returned to the pavilion with 7 runs to his name. The man who scored the highest for India was yet again the skipper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He scored 36 runs from 55 balls and also hit 3 huge sixes. Apart from him, Yuvraj Singh(23), Suresh Raina(31) and Ravindra Jadeja(27) tried to show some fight. All the Pakistan bowlers had a good outing but Saeed Ajmal had a great one with a 5-wicket haul to his name conceding only 24 runs from 9.4 overs that he bowled.

Bhuvaneshwar Kumar took 2 early wickets
            Pakistan needed 168 runs from 300 balls. Indian fans had no hope of a win but they still decided to stay back in the stadium, maybe just wishing for some magic to happen. Mohammad Hafeez suffered a hand injury while fielding in the first innings and thus Kamran Akmal came out to open along with Nasir Jamshed. The new star of India Bhuvaneshwar Kumar struck in the third over of the innings when he dismissed Kamran Akmal for a golden duck. A few overs later, he also sent Younis Khan back just for 6 runs. Before this match Nasir Jamshed had played 3 ODIs against India and scored a century in each. But this time, R Ashwin did not allow him to go beyond 34. Captain Misbah-ul-Haq held onto his nerve and stood firmly at one end but wickets kept falling from the other. The debutant medium pacer Shami Ahmed proved to be extremely effective as he sent down 4 maidens out of the 9 overs that he bowled and got a wicket as well. Jadeja kept it tight as he gave just 19 runs from his 10 overs for one wicket. Ishant Sharma took 3 crucial wickets and bowled India to a hard fought contest. Pakistan were all out for 157 runs in 48.5 overs and India won by 10 runs.  MS Dhoni was adjudged the Man of the Match, Nasir Jamshed was declared the Man of the Series and Pakistan won the series 2-1.

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