Eternal archrivals India and Pakistan take on each other today at Mirpur with lots at stake for both the teams, none more so than staying in contention for a place in the final of the 12th Asia Cup.
The mother of all cricketing clashes, the outcome of the encounter will go a long way in determining which of the two sides are the favourites for a final berth.A defeat for either side, in all likelihood, will spell the end of the campaign.
Having played two games each, both India and Pakistan have a win and a loss to their record. Pakistan though are slightly ahead, courtesy a bonus point gained against Afghanistan. Ahead of the marquee tie, Pakistan have five points to India’s four.
India opened their Asia Cup adventure with a comfortable six-wicket win against hosts Bangladesh before going down to a narrow two-wicket loss to Sri Lanka.
Pakistan on the other hand opened their campaign with a 12-run defeat against Sri Lanka before returning to winning ways against Afghanistan. The Afghans went down by 72 runs to not only present Pakistan with a handsome victory but also a bonus point.
With the Lankans at the top of the points table with two wins out of two, none of the Asian giants will contemplate defeat.
Both the sides have a lot to ponder and will like to correct some mistakes.
Pakistan suffered mini batting collapses in both their games and captain Misbah-ul-Haq said ahead of the game that they yearn playing with more responsibility, especially the batting department.
At one stage against the Afghans, Pakistan were tottering at 117-6 in the 30th over while in their opening game against the Lankans, the Pakistani batsmen gave away their wickets and lost by 12 runs despite being in a good position.
‘We have a very important match against India coming up now, so we have to avoid making these kinds of mistakes. We have to take responsibility, especially as a batting unit,’ said Misbah.
India on the contrary had to contend with two factors throughout the tournament – several dropped catches and missed stumpings along with the continued loss of form of one of their opening batters, Rohit Sharma.
Since the start of the year, Sharma is averaging 25.57 in seven one-day internationals. In the games against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the right-handed batsman scored 21 and 13 respectively.
Stand-in Indian skipper Virat Kohli though backed his opener saying that Sharma deserves the support due to his previous exploits with the bat in the opening position.
‘We need to have faith in him because he’s done really well and stepped up when we didn’t have any opening options. He’s filled in that spot beautifully and I think he deserves all the faith,’ said Kohli ahead of the Pakistan game.
When India and Pakistan last met in the Asia Cup two years ago in Bangladesh, Kohli smashed a magnificent 148-ball 183 in a high-scoring game at Mirpur and guided his side to a resounding six-wicket win with 13 balls to spare.
And Pakistan batting consultant Zaheer Abbas on Saturday said that the Mirpur pitch will once again be expected to produce a good batting track.
‘I got to know [that] this is a better wicket than the Fatullah one. It could be a perfect batting wicket. It all depends on how the batsman is going to play,’ said Zaheer.
-With New Age input
