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| November 11, 2007 | Sunday | Shawwal 29, 1428 |
Pakistan, India lock horns in Kanpur today : Afridi returns to favourite hunting ground
KANPUR (India), Nov 10: Rejuvenated by a superb win in Mohali, a confident Pakistan team will take on India in the third One-day International of the five-match series here at the Green Park on Sunday.After both teams arrived in Kanpur in the evening on Saturday, India had a press conference at their hotel and will be ready for the toss at 8.30 on Sunday morning.
Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik, along with his coach Geoff Lawson, went to the ground to have a look at the pitch, but they were too late as they met a covered wicket and a curator who wouldn’t budge. And it looked unlikely that India would go to have a look at the conditions, and get luckier than their opponents.
It must have taken a lot of hard work, though, to keep big-hitting Shahid Afridi away from the Green Park for so long. In 2005, here at Kanpur, Afridi had taken cricket to a different sphere, where whatever whoever did didn’t matter: only Afridi did.
He blasted a century off 45 balls here in the ODI Pakistan, chasing 250 odd, won easily in the end due to his ultra-explosive batting in the first 15 overs. And so the veteran would definitely be looking to repeat that remarkable feat here today.
The teams have reached Kanpur in similar circumstances as they did in 2005. Pakistan had launched a comeback then to level the six-match series 2-2 before the Kanpur match. They are 1-1 now, but Pakistan have come back and have the momentum with them following possibly their greatest run chase in Mohali.
The satisfying thing for the tourists is that they seem to have worked out a helpful batting plan, involving successful utilization of Afridi in the middle rather than fielding him as an opener.
Though Pakistan bowlers, notably Shoaib Akhtar, Umar Gul and Sohail Tanvir bowled well during crucial stages of the Mohali thriller, yet their and the rest of their bowling partners’ extravagant gifting of extras (41 including 31 wides) have resulted in fines on their team and with umpires’ eyes certain to be on the clocks today, Malik and company will have to get rid of extras bother once and for all.
A specialist spinner can only help them with the over-rate, and it is likely they will bring back left-arm spinner Abdur Rehman on a track that tends to be flat.
After having dropped Murali Kartik for the previous game, doubts about India’s combination still revolve around the second spinner. They will surely want to go with one more bowler after failing to defend a colossal 321.
Dropping Virender Sehwag would be questionable as he looked good in scoring 25 in Mohali on his comeback. Five bowlers have served India well recently, but the more worrying thing for the hosts would be the failure of their bowlers to restrict the runs in the closing stages of a game, something Mahendra Singh Dhoni has stated on number of occasions at press conferences though he has been optimistic about everything else.
Since the start of the series against Australia, in completed innings and up against a charge, Indian bowlers have had only two respectable showings in the last 20 overs (less than 150 runs).
Spinners have played a role on both occasions, once when Murali Kartik dismissed Hayden to stifle Australia’s chase in Chandigarh, and then in Guwahati when Harbhajan Singh and Kartik gave away 65 runs in their 20 overs.
Manager Lalchand Rajput indicated that if the wicket was flat, they might play Kartik, saying: “If the wicket is the traditional Kanpur wicket, we will be tempted to play an extra bowler. And that could be a spinner.”
Teams (from):
INDIA: Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Mahendra Dhoni, (captain), Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, R.P. Singh, Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth, Murali Kartik, Rohit Sharma, Praveen Kumar.
PAKISTAN: Salman Butt, Kamran Akmal, Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf, Misbah-ul-Haq, Shoaib Malik (captain), Shahid Afridi, Sohail Tanvir, Umar Gul, Shoaib Akhtar, Rao Iftikhar Anjum, Abdur Rehman, Imran Nazir, Yasir Hameed, Fawad Alam.—Agencies
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