Cricket’s biggest rivalry lights up Premadasa Stadium

India continued its dominance over arch-rivals Pakistan when they triumphed by a convincing margin of 61 runs in the high-profile ICC T20 Cricket World Cup match played at the R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.

It was all one-way traffic as India simply displayed their batting prowess to pile up 175 for seven and then dismantled their opponents for a miserable 114 runs with two overs to spare.

Pakistan’s decision to field first paid dividends when opener Abhishek Sharma fell for a four-ball duck off paceman Shaheen Afridi.

However, India launched a magnificent counterattack immediately with Ishan Kishan producing his best performance in this format racing to a 27-ball half century with two sixes and seven boundaries.

The 27-year-old dashing left-hander set the stage with a whirlwind 77 as India went on to keep the momentum with Tilak Varma, Skipper Suryakumar Yadav and Shivam Dube producing nice cameos to boost the total.

In reply, the Pakistan innings fell into pieces as they succumbed under pressure losing a couple of early wickets and the game was almost over for them by the halfway stage.

The Indian seamers Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah bowled to their field and applied pressure on the Pakistan batsmen from the very start of the innings.

The Pakistan top order did not have answers to India’s fabulous seam bowling as they lost their top four batsmen for 34 runs and had slumped to 78 for seven by the 13th over.

The spinners Axar Patel and Varun Chakrawarthy took over from there and ran through the Pakistan middle and late order to complete an emphatic win in the end.

Source - Sunday Observer