India Vs Pakistan

The semi-finals of a world cup, India Vs Pakistan, one would have expected great skills at display befitting the stage. With Passion and Patriotism running feverishly high, an Indian or a Pakistani was within his rights to expect a great game.

The Who is Who of India poured into the Stadium in support of the Men in Blue. The movers and shakers of the Indian Parliament made their presence as well. The stage was made even bigger by the presence of the Indian PM and his Pakistani counterpart. Such August gathering needed a great game.

At the end of the Game, Team India walked out victorious. It was not a one-sided match as I thought it would be. Had one of the two teams entered the ground, fully awake, it would have been a one-sided affair, as I predicted.

The cricket crazy fans of India and Pakistan have dubbed this game as a tense game. The intensity, no doubt, was very high mainly because of the nature of relationship the two neighbors have.

The cricket that was on display in the Semi-Finals was one of the below-par exhibitions of the game in a Semi-final event. When teams reach up to the Semi-finals of an event, the standard of the game is expected to be in a much higher level. Unfortunately, that was not the case in this contest.

The standard of the game was very poor. Dropped catches, poor fielding, bad bowling, poor batting and poor team selection too, every aspect of the game was found wanting in this contest. The only exception was Wahab Riaz who gave a stand-out performance, aided at times by poor shot selection of the Indian Batsmen.

Was it the pressure of playing each other? Or was it just a bad day at work by both the teams? Surely, no one can answer this. This game is surely not a showpiece of ODIs. Many were expecting one or two players from India or Pakistan to stand-up to the occasion and excel with brilliance in clinching the game in their teams favor. Unfortunately, the game was not scripted that way and the team with lesser unforced errors won the game.

This world cup has seen some great games like the England-India, England-South Africa, England-Ireland, encounters. These games restored the credibility of the ODIs and presented a strong case for the continuation of ODIs. The Indo-Pak encounter was surely a disappointment.

India won the game but the quality was not worth the Billing.