Review: IND VS PAK 1st ODI, Chennai

This is the match, which teaches a lot to the cricket world. The technique of leading with One hand, the art of maintaining the partnership, the patience in the critical situation, the disconcert of doing magic with the new ball, the way of being dogged, and much more...

Rain was played in the ground before the players do. So, The fate of the match was decided, when the coin was spinned. As per the conventional method the home captain must spin the toss and the visitor can raise his choice to take the advantage. The strong power of fate make the coin to spin with favour to the visitor. And they got the chance to make their choice to bowl first. The tourist seamers were ready to do the tricks with the new ball with the help of some wet mud pitch.

The match gone to the critical situation as soon as the innings started and make the Indian's throat dry. Its been long time, these two teams had met in the battle field, so, people were expecting more from this match, as we know they came early to watch this match with lot of enthusiasm. But top order Indian batsmen were failed to show their responsibility over the people’s trust. India lost 5 wickets already, among those 4 were bowled out by tourist seamers. Junait Khan, who turned this match to the critical situation, had filled up his packet with 4 out of India's 5 wickets. I think he never like the stumps which are on the way of his ball, he plugged away the sticks which protects the Indian batsmen. And India was put in the level of 29/5 at 9.4 overs. If this situation remains and continue for little longer time then the innings will end up within 20th over. On that time, India needed a huge partnership which can lead the team upto the 50th over.

MSD's smash

By the time the crowd got upset, The Helicopter came to the pitch to sharing a hand with Raina. This partnership struggled to get the decent score. Both were played in deffending manner. It’s very hard to act, to play like a child even a person know how to hit hard and scoring. But this hard hit fashion was no longer needed for that situation, and this pair understood clearly and kept it in mind. So, they waited for the perfect time to show their real play. Dhoni gave a chance to Misbah when he was in 16*, but Misbah failed to make use of it. After a long time of struggling, India decided to take the Batting Powerplay advantage in the 34th over and it costs the Raina's wicket in back. Raina was bowled out in 43 off 88 balls by Hafeez at the 2nd ball of the powerplay.

The next batsman was a Superking from chennai, Ashwin came with the eager to help his favourite skipper to lift the Team India from 102/6. He gave a good partnership with the Worldcup winning captain to help him score more runs with his own style. The moment, which Dhoni was waiting for, was came at 39.2 as Junaid Khan checked the patience of Dhoni by the no-ball which brings up a Free hit time. Dhoni found that it was the correct moment to start his real play with the initial shot of 6 on the Freehit ball. And He did it. And after that, this pair kept the momentum upto the end of the game by scoring more than 8 runs in every over. In the 49th over which was bowled by the Mohammed Irfan, worlds most spoken cricketer, Dhoni showed a awesome way to bring his century by hitting 4,4,6 consecutively. And while hitting the first boundary he crossed 7000 runs milestone in his ODI career. Finally India scored 227/6 in 50 overs with Dhoni's 113*, Raina's 43 and Ashwin's 31*. The Interesting fact is these three men belongs to CHENNAI SUPER KINGS.

At the end of the first innings, Pakistan smashed India for the first 10 overs but not able to continue it with Superking Indians

After that visitors were arrived to battle field to show their capabilities in order to chasing the 228 target.

Cooling the Helicopter's Engine

The magic with new ball was not only worked for visitors, it worked for India's Debt seamer also. Bhuvanesh Kumar, he is the man having the ability to swing the ball well. He took the wicket on the very first ball of his ODI career, bowling out the Hafeez(The biggest hope of Pakistan) and became the second indian to made this record after Sadagoppan Ramesh and 17th in all over the world. He was not ended with this, picked Azhar Ali's wicket also, and ended his first spell with 7-3-11-2 figure. After that Pakistan looked a little weaker but the Younis Khan's experience with Jamshed's young spirit had took the match away from India's hand. Both were played a little slower innings and were keeping the wicket along with scoring the runs. In 30.3 Younis khan was bowled out by the YORKER from Dinda and gave a way to Pakistan's skipper Misbah to pair with Jamshed. But he failed to shine and he gone with a score of 16 by a Slow delivery from Ishant. Then Jamshed was looking for the good partnership to see the victory. Shoaib Malik fulfilled his need. Jamshed, who played in his 3 innings against India led their team to the winning moment and scored his 2nd century in ODI, both against India. Finally Pakistan met the target with 11 balls left.

Junaid - The match turner

But in this innings many wrong decisions were being taken by the umpires and those were costs the game.First one was Bhuvaneshwar Kumar's great appeal for the plum LBW to Jamshed and another one was Ashwin's shouting Appeal for caught by Sehwag behind, this was also for Jamshed.

MSD was named as the Man of the Match for his wonderful innings, his innings were compared to Famous Sachin's knock against Australia in Sharjah and he scored 143, and the world famous innings by Kapil Dev against Zimbabwe in 1983 world cup and he scored 175* while team India struggled in that match by losing top 5 batsmen just for 15 total score. The interesting fact on that match was Zimbabwe’s captain, Duncan Fletcher, who is the current coacher for Team India. Anyway MSD's Century gone in vain, as Pakistans were played with 13 men not 11 including UMPIRE and VARUNA BAGHAVAN.