ICC World Cup: India to meet its arch-rivals Pakistan at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad
In ICC World Cup Cricket, India will meet arch-rivals Pakistan at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad today. The match will begin at 2 p.m. India and Pakistan have four points each from two matches played so far.
Earlier, New Zealand defeated Bangladesh by eight wickets at Chepauk Stadium in Chennai yesterday. Chasing 246 runs for a win, New Zealand made 248 runs with 7.1 overs to spare. Put in to bat, Bangladesh made 245 runs losing nine wickets in the stipulated 50 overs.
New Zealand have won all the three matches played so far and Bangladesh one from three matches.
Even Jurassic Park wasn’t additive-free. If the genetic codes were pure, those dinosaurs would have looked quite different. But nobody, neither the park’s owners nor us the audience, wanted normal. We kept asking for more teeth.
India and Pakistan are dinosaurs. They’re wow enough. Put them on a cricket field and they breathe a very different life to the game with their shared history, geography, culture and even jingoism. But it is not #GreatestRivalry in the ‘Greatest Cricket World Cup ever’ without the scope and scale of this two-pointer game getting wider. We see your Melbourne 2022 and raise you Ahmedabad 2023. While we’re at it, how about an entertainment program before the entertainment begins, nine days after the show got underway in this very place.
It somehow seems unfair to expect only 22 out of a billion-plus to act sober even when it is clearly business, but not as usual. While both India and Pakistan are united by their shared experience of the extreme being their everyday, Rohit Sharma’s team might just have an edge in this regard. They are familiar with the idea of taking their pre-match routines outside this giant saucer of a stadium, as they did before the start of a Test match earlier this year to accommodate the political pageantry. Pakistan on this historic visit, however, seem ready to embrace anything that comes their way. Be it the cheers, the flipped returns for their top and middle-orders, and incessant questions about biryani.
For all their talent, they however remain a team that can still be governed by emotions on the field. They drive from it but can also succumb to it. In the heat of the final exchanges at the MCG last year, it was Shadab Khan and not Babar moving fielders around, setting plays and generally taking over decision making with even Hardik Pandya, the batter, helping position the third man fielder properly. India deal with the chaos slightly better. They’ve won a home World Cup before and their players are far too along the path of process to be easily swayed.
Which brings us to the largest dino in the park: the 7-0 streak. Those numbers, as in the stadium tomorrow, are stacked up against Pakistan. And it will need a massive effort against a well-rounded Indian outfit, but if Babar and Co. can find a way to upend the odds, this tournament may just get the organic spark it has so dearly longed for.
Squads:
India Squad: Rohit Sharma(c), Ishan Kishan, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Shubman Gill, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Shami, Suryakumar Yadav
Pakistan Squad: Abdullah Shafique, Imam-ul-Haq, Babar Azam(c), Mohammad Rizwan(w), Saud Shakeel, Iftikhar Ahmed, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Hasan Ali, Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf, Agha Salman, Fakhar Zaman, Usama Mir, Mohammad Wasim Jr
