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.
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.
Bhuvaneshwar Kumar took 2 early wickets |
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