Virat win for India
Men in Blue continue winning streak against Pak in World Cup
KOLKATA: An evening at the Eden Gardens that began with rain, ended with Virat Kohli raining boundaries.
His gusty 55 off 37 balls powered India to a six-wicket win over Pakistan on Saturday, keeping alive their chances of making it to the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup after opening their campaign with a loss against New Zealand.
History, Pakistan coach Waqar Younis said before the game, might change but the Men in Blue showed once again that when it came to World Cup ties against Pakistan, there was only one winner.
This was India’s 11th win in a World Cup match, the fifth in the T20 format and the remaining in ODIs.
It’s something Kohli too believes. In the way he anchored India and helped his team recover from a top-order collapse, the right-handed batsman showed lessons from Nagpur have been learnt. Gone was the unbridled aggression that fetched India a string of wins but left them undone against New Zealand.
Seated in the stands, cricket heroes of yesteryear and Amitabh Bachchan followed former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s words ‘khel hi nahin, dil bhi jitna’, an advice given before the 2004 tour of Pakistan. But when cricket began, Eden shouted ‘Pakistan harega’ with more gusto than they have all week. The delayed start took many back to a March evening in 1996 and a World Cup semi-final India would rather forget. This time though, it wasn’t the opposition bowlers who were getting the ball to hiss and snake past batsmen. Ashwin left not just the Pakistan openers but also MS Dhoni befuddled at times.
But it wasn’t just a track where batsmen needed to have ballet dancers’ feet to combat turn. Pacers Ashish Nehra and Mohammad Sami showed that.
When England played South Africa last Friday, fours and sixes rained at Wankhede. But at Eden, there were intermittent showers that cut into the overs. The first six of the Pakistan innings came in the 14th over, the first from India came in the 11th. This World T20 will not just be about power hitting.
KOLKATA: You could see it coming — another Virat Kohli masterpiece that was as much about flair as it was of patience. This was one match India couldn’t have lost but only Kohli seemed to be armed with the right skills to keep India on top of Pakistan in ICC tournaments. And unlike in the Asia Cup, this time Kohli completed both his half-century and stayed till the moment Dhoni finished it off in style.
This being Eden Gardens, it was expected Rohit Sharma would give India an assuring start. He warmed up with a boundary off Mohammad Irfan over point and followed it up with a trademark pull. Having kept up with the asking rate, the next few balls could have been used to rotate the strike but Sharma fell to his natural instincts by miscuing a lofted drive.
FOCUSED
A brief period of mindless batting followed when both Shikhar Dhawan and Suresh Raina gifted their wickets to Mohammad Sami by chopping his short ball onto their stumps. Kohli was not to be lured so easily though. Playing close to his body, he only picked out the worst deliveries. Like his first boundary, off a short and wide Sami delivery, that he rocked back to delicately guide it behind point. Then he picked out another short one from Wahab Riaz, timing his pull to the midwicket boundary.
Important on this Eden pitch was the length offered by the pacers. Both sixes in Pakistan’s innings had come off full-pitched deliveries. The first came in the 14th over, when Pandya pitched it too up for Shoaib Malik to just hit through its line over midwicket. The second came --- almost a carbon copy, only pitched wider --- two balls later. But those were mere aberrations in an otherwise consistent Indian pace bowling.
This current batch of India batsmen are good at pulling and hooking, especially Yuvraj. But Pakistan kept feeding him with deliveries that allowed him to free his arms. Driving Sami through the covers gave Yuvraj the confidence to pull Riaz for a massive six, though he fell in the same over.
Rest was done by Kohli. By focusing on ground shots, he cut out all possible risk. When Shahid Afridi was mixing it up, he focused on nudging the ball to vacant areas for singles and twos. And when Shoaib Malik erred, he pounced on him. In each over after Yuvraj’s dismissal, Kohli made sure he got at least one boundary. All came off the cover drive that Kohli had been practicing so diligently on Saturday. By the time he had cut Mohammad Irfan for a four, the equation was in India’s favour. The winning runs, as usual, came from MS Dhoni’s bat but this was a victory scripted by the grit of Kohli.