India broke the series of continual victories by Pakistani team over Indian team by winning a match with a big margin of 140 runs in the second match of the one-day tri-series at Sher-e-Bangla stadium at Mirpur in Dhaka. Each batsman and bowler of Indian team strived really hard to stop the 13the consecutive win which was expected by Pakistani team.
India elected to bat and gave a big target of 330 runs to the rival team of Pakistan. The top order line got the major credit in this massive pile of score. Both openers – Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir – had a good partnership of 155 runs, with individual runs of 89 and 62. This laid a strong foundation for big total.
In reply, the whole Pakistani team collapsed in 35.4-overs making just 190 runs.
This resulted to give India one of the biggest wins over Pakistan in their cricket history.
Shoaib Malik carried on fighting alone without having any able ally on the other side to resist with him.
Praveen Kumar hit the backbone of Pakistani team by taking three quick wickets; including two on consecutive balls giving him a hatrick chance.
He took 4 wickets by giving 53 runs in its total spell of 10-overs. Piyush Chawla, a young spinner, supported him well and took 4 for 40.
Pakistani team lost stability in early first five overs, by loosing their three early wickets at a score of 26. Kumar send off Salman Butt at 9, Younis Khan at zero and Muhammad Yusuf at 11 and created desperate emotions in the Pakistani camp.
However, Kumar was smashed really hard in the ninth over of the inning when Kamran Akmal, who was in high esteem, and Misbah-ul-Haq stroke four boundaries. This took the score up to 58. Akmal was playing a really offensive and good game but lost his wicket by getting caught at mid-on by Yusuf Patthan when he tried to hit a low full toss ball.
Misbah (24) also didn’t resist in the field for a much long time after Akmal’s dismissal. He was comfortably caught by M.S.
Dhoni by giving an edge on a delivery by Ishant Sharma.
These immediate fall of wickets and slow run rate raised the run rate up to seven runs per over. Skipper Malik was alone to face this challenge with his out of form ally Shahid Afridi. A strong partnership was required at that moment; but Afridi (23) failed to build a good start of his game due to his over aggressive nature of game.
He stepped forward out of the crease to hit Piyush Chawla but missed it completely. Dhoni got a chance to stump him and he didn’t loose it. The last hopes of Pakistani viewers also gone away with the fall of Afridi’s wicket.
