Cricket Diary

India prevail over Pakistan in a nail biter The 3rd and the last one-day international between India and Pakistan played on 6th January, 2013 in New Delhi finally gave the Indian supporters a reason to celebrate. In a low scoring game, India(167 all out) beat Pakistan(157 all out) by 10 runs to prevent a white wash in the 3 match series. Pakistan defeated India in the previous two ODIs and were all set to clean sweep the series. India won the toss and decided to bat first but the poor batting form continued as they managed a total of only 167 runs from 43.4 overs. Due to lack of form, Virender Sehwag had been dropped from the playing eleven and Ajinkya Rahane was selected as Gautam Gambhir’s new opening partner. But he could not prove his worth as he added only 4 runs while Gambhir made 15. The out of form Virat Kohli also struggled and returned to the pavilion with 7 runs to his name. The man who scored the highest for India was yet again the skipper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He scored 36 runs from 55 balls and also hit 3 huge sixes. Apart from him, Yuvraj Singh(23), Suresh Raina(31) and Ravindra Jadeja(27) tried to show some fight. All the Pakistan bowlers had a good outing but Saeed Ajmal had a great one with a 5-wicket haul to his name conceding only 24 runs from 9.4 overs that he bowled. Pakistan needed 168 runs from 300 balls. Indian fans had no hope of a win but they still decided to stay back in the stadium, maybe just wishing for some magic to happen. Mohammad Hafeez suffered a hand injury while fielding in the first innings and thus Kamran Akmal came out to open along with Nasir Jamshed. The new star of India Bhuvaneshwar Kumar struck in the third over of the innings when he dismissed Kamran Akmal for a golden duck. A few overs later, he also sent Younis Khan back just for 6 runs. Before this match Nasir Jamshed had played 3 ODIs against India and scored a century in each. But this time, R Ashwin did not allow him to go beyond 34. Captain