India lost two early wickets but Abhishek Sharma had already set the stage with a quickfire 31-run innings which was built on by captain Suryakumar Yadav (47 runs) and Tilak Verma (31) as the Men in Blue romped to victory against Pakistan by 7 wickets in the Asia Cup Group A encounter on Sunday. Saim Ayub was the best bowler for Pakistan, taking 3 wickets.
With the latest win, India are currently the only team with 2 wins in the Asia Cup, almost guaranteeing their qualification to the Super 4s later this week. Before that, Suryakumar and his men will finish up their group stage assignment against Oman on Friday.
For Pakistan, they will have to dust themselves up and take on UAE next in a match that they are expected to win. If they do, in all likelihood, they’ll face India once more next Sunday with both Oman and UAE still winless even though they’ll face each other on Monday and one of them will get on the board.
Earlier, Kuldeep Yadav’s artistry, Axar Patel’s discipline and Varun Chakravarthy’s guile stifled Pakistan to a lowly 127 for nine as India completely dominated the first half.
The Indians thus once again displayed the gulf in quality between the two neighbouring nations.
Spinners Axar (2/18 in 4 overs), Kuldeep (3/18 in 4 overs) and Varun (1/24 in 4 overs) were immaculate in terms of line and length as none of the Pakistani batters showed the wherewithal to play the troika from their hands. The result was inevitable and there was no dramatic change to the expected script.
Between Axar, Kuldeep and Varun, they delivered 40 dot balls and add another 15 from Jasprit Bumrah, and one can understand the plight of the Pakistani batters.
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Had Shaheen Shah Afridi (33 not out off 16 balls) not used the long handle, the score wouldn’t have gone past 125.
Suryakumar Yadav lost the toss, didn’t shake hands with counterpart Salman Ali Agha, but never lost the plot as the opposition batters were all at sea from the very first legal delivery, when the highly rated Saim Ayub (0) slashed one off Hardik Pandya (1/34 in 3 overs) to Bumrah at point.
Bumrah (2/28 in 4 overs) in the next over got last match’s top scorer Mohammad Haris (3) who tried a pick-up pull shot, but this time, Pandya returned the favour to India’s lead pacer by taking a well-judged catch in fine leg region.
Sahibzada Farhan (40 of 44 balls) did hit Bumrah for a couple of sixes but largely couldn’t read any of the Indian spinners as dot balls accumulated by the dozen.
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It was not just poor shot selection but also lack of technique that troubled the Pakistan batters against the world’s top spinners.
Only Fakhar Zaman (17 off 15 balls) could be excused for taking risk against Axar as he has had a good career match-up against slow left-arm orthodox bowlers.
Moments after Axar was brought into the attack, Fakhar went for the jugular and was caught at long-on by Tilak Varma.
Since they were unable to read the Indian wrist spinners from their hands, the Pakistani batters went for the obvious but high-risk option of playing the slog sweep. Both skipper Salman (3 off 12 balls) and the hard-hitting Hasan Nawaz tried to hit out of trouble without gauging the length and extra bounce.
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The left-handed Mohammed Nawaz found Kuldeep’s googly too hot to handle.
Farhan, who not for once dominated the spinners, holed out in the deep off Kuldeep as Pakistan’s woes against India in multilateral events continued.
(With agency inputs)
