||Desk Report||

 

More than a year after their last encounter in the ICC Champions Trophy final, India once again faced Pakistan in the last Group B-match of the Asia Cup. However, this time India did not let their Asian neighbor take away the champions tag and will play the Super Four as the Group B-toppers.

Starting the match with the toss-win, Pakistan made no mistake and chose to bat first, but it was after that when the serious mistakes were made by their batters. They characteristically failed to build up their innings after a stable partnership between Shoaib Malik and Babar Azam, midway through the innings as they scored 40-odd runs each.

The rest of the Pakistan batting lineup suffered against the flawless bowling from the Indian camp, who made sure that Hardik Pandya’s injury-driven ouster did not have a negative impact on the game.

Kedar Jadhav and Bhuvneshwar Kumar topped the wicket-taking list, by taking three wickets each.

India put up a totally different display from they did against Hong Kong in the previous clash and never truly gave Pakistan the space to settle down and carefully handle the opponents.

With only 162 runs on the board, Pakistan were more disappointing with the ball. Shadab Khan produced a late breakthrough, but India skipper Rohit Sharma had done the damage and also got a fifty to his name by then.

Shikhar Dhawan also piled on the pressure with a 46-run knock, before Dinesh Karthik and Ambati Rayudu put up two substantial innings to steer the team to a 8-wicket victory with 21 overs to spare.

India will start their journey in the next round with the match against Bangladesh on Friday (September 21). Pakistan, on the other hand, will try to find out the reasons behind their failures despite playing in familiar conditions before facing Afghanistan on the same day.

 

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