Champions Trophy: Pakistan vs West Indies - Heroes of the day

Despite many reservations about one-day cricket, the Champions Trophy seems to have something for everyone. After the high-scoring opening match in Cardiff, there was a low-scoring thriller at The Oval with West Indies scrambling past the finish line against Pakistan’s deadly pace attack to register an invaluable two-wicket victory.

Here are the men whose performances stood out from yesterday’s encounter:

Misbah-ul-Haq - Man of Steel

“tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, bang, tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, oh Misbah we love you for that, out of the blue” was one of the tweets doing rounds yesterday. It was an apt description of what happened yesterday. When Misbah came into bat, Pakistan were 15/3 after 6 overs as they typically crumbled like pack of cards; it was Misbah who dropped the anchor and rescued the Pakistani innings from a hopeless position. Misbah paced his innings quite well, initially seeing off a dangerous spell from Kemar Roach, and then started milking the less threatening bowlers. His gritty knock pushed him to 96 runs off 127 balls, while the rest of team managed to score a grand total of 74 runs. Misbah scored almost 60% of his teams runs.

Just after he was made the captain of Pakistan, he spoke bluntly about the challenges he has been burdened with. “It is bad for Pakistan cricket when people taunt us at home and abroad,” he had said. “It is a mental torture to go through such things.”

There was that familiar torture for Misbah at The Oval, with his team-mates leaving him high and dry, as they resembled club level cricketers incompetent of handling seam and pace. But one thing that Misbah would be proud of was the huge number of Pakistani fans cheering the team on.

Misbah obliged them with his best ODI innings in a Pakistan shirt and was cruelly denied what would have been tremendous hundred.

Dwayne Bravo- The attacking captain

Earlier in the week Dwayne Bravo, the newly-appointed West Indies captain, said in a press conference that he was going to be an attacking captain.

It’s a bold statement to make as cricket doesn’t always work the way you want it to. A flat pitch, heavy bats and nerves are a perfect recipe for the most attacking modern captain to hide behind such excuses, and end up with sweepers and fielders in positions where his bowlers would find almost impossible to get wickets.

But Dwayne Bravo attacked; of course it helped that Kemar Roach was in the middle of a wonderful spell of 6-4-7-3. Roach’s success in the opening spell was partly due to the fact that for all six overs Bravo had three slips, a short-leg and leg-gully. Now that is a rare sight to see in limited overs of the game. But in his first match as a full-time captain, he was clearly dictating the flow of the match. Not to forget the fact that he benched Sammy, the previous captain from whom he took over, was indeed a brave decision.

Kemar Roach- The tormentor-in-chief

Four years ago, Roach announced himself in world cricket when he bowled Shane Watson with a peach of a yorker. Incidentally, that match was also in the Champions Trophy; four years later, the fiery young man is now the leader of West Indies pace attack and is duly living up to the responsibility entrusted to him by Ottis Gibson. Roach finished with match figures of 10-4-28-3. It could have been four had it not been for Ramdin spilling a dolly when Misbah had not even opened his account. For Roach, it seems this tournament might just propel him into stardom, making him one of the most respected fast bowlers in the world; and he duly deserves it!