The nucleus of the team is ready

10

A fantastic ODI series win for India after losing the first match. Without a major contribution and involvement of the big and established players it was a very comprehensive win. The youngsters have show the way and gone for the kill even though this was a dead rubber. Indian cricket is now going the Australian way and no one can take his place for granted. The mantra now is perform or perish and with many young players ready to step into the shoes of the senior players even the seniors are giving a good performance. All the young players have performed admirably and pushed the seniors. So in my opinion this has been the biggest gain from the Pakistan tour. We have won most of the matches without a major role being played by Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid. The absence of some of....

The pressure is on Pakistan

10

It was a resounding victory for India. Basically in my opinion the bowlers should be given all the credit for this win. Generally the One-Day matches are won by the batsmen but today the bowlers did the trick for India. On a wicket that was not very helpful for the bowlers India did an excellent job. Early wickets always puts the batting side on the backfoot and today also the same thing happened. This builds up the pressure on the batsmen and that was proved today. The delivery that Irfan bowled to take the first wicket reminded me of the hat-trick delivery that he had bowled in the Karachi Test match. It was the same kind of delivery and even the batsmen was same. Then the second wicket also fell soon and those two wickets put the pressure on Pakistan. Apart from that the Pakistan team....

Indian bowling was pedestrian

10

I thought it was very sad that a great match like this should come to an end in such a manner. India should have won the match but it lost due to the lack of planning. After a brilliant start by Sachin Tendulkar, Irfan Pathan and Mahendra Singh Dhoni and good support from Yuvraj Singh, the Indian lower order messed up. What should have been a total of above 350 was restricted to 328 by the Pakistanis as the Indians threw away their wickets. How can a team that has got such a great platform lose seven wickets for just 23 runs? That is where India lost the match as they could not play the full 50 overs and were bowled out in 49.4 overs. Our lower middle order was exposed today when all they had to do was just apply themselves and stay at the crease. But....

India needed a miracle to win

10

It was a very pathetic display by the Indian team. Pakistan were clearly the better side and they deserved to win. As I had already said yesterday that there will be no draw in the match. One of the team had to win the match and it would have been a miracle if India had won. Except for the first two hours when the Pakistanis were on their backfoot they never looked like losing the match. Their lower order took them to a good score despite being at 39 for six at one stage. After that the Pakistani bowlers made sure that the Indian batting line up did not do anything extraordinary. In their second innings the Pakistani batsmen made mince meat of the Indian bowlers and every one said that the pitch has lost the pace and bounce. But I had said that once the Pakistan....