Asia Cup 2018: Why India will crush Pakistan again
Again! Yes, again! India will defeat Pakistan on Sunday's top-four round-robin fixture of the Asia Cup. India completely dominated and outclassed arch-rivals Pakistan in their last match as the World No.2 ODI side registered one of their biggest triumphs.
Here are five reasons why India will crush Pakistan. Again!
India's firing opening pair
India's opening pair of Shikhar Dhawan and skipper Rohit Sharma has had a brilliant campaign in the ongoing Asia Cup as they look very much confident on the pitch and have given a solid start till now. The opening pair has so far contributed 371 runs in the three matches played in Dubai.
Shikhar Dhawan, who had a terrible campaign in the England Test series, scored a century in the first match against Hong Kong, scored 46 against Pakistan and a 40 run knock against Bangladesh on Friday. Dhawan sits atop on the highest scoring table with 213 runs while skipper Rohit Sharma is placed third with 158 runs.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's opening pair looks shambolic especially their much-hyped youth player Fakhar Zaman, two ducks in two consecutive matches.
Solid performance of Indian bowlers
India has got their deadly duo of Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar back in the squad and they are firing with all cylinders. Although Indian bowlers did put up a good show in the England series but this duo is what they missed as it was lower order English batsmen, who made the difference when India failed to get a breakthrough.
Much firepower has been added with Kuldeep and Chahal performing extraordinarily. India would have missed a fifth bowling option after Pandya was ruled out of the series, but miraculous Kedar Jadhav came to fill the gap.
And Sir Jadeja put the icing on the cake as he came cruising back in the squad with a four-wicket haul against Bangladesh in Dubai.
Pakistan failing in every department
World No. 5 Pakistan, who comes up with a new squad in every next series, have had a hard time in this Asia Cup as they were crushed by India by 8 wickets and 126 balls to spare and achieved a hard-fought victory against Afghanistan.
Their opening pair had failed to put up a good show together. Imam-ul-Haq seems to be on and off while Fakhar Zaman got out on duck, twice. Pakistan's middle order remains very much dependent on veteran Shoaib Malik and has so far missed a big partnership after the openers have failed to score.
Their woes against spin are out in the open after the match against India and especially against Afghanistan, understand what Jadeja, Kuldeep, Chahal and Kedar would do in the next match. Pakistan's pace attack has also not delivered much in the series so far and Hasan Ali's bold claims of taking all 10 Indian wickets have brought much embarrassment to the team as well. He should better work on his bowling than bragging around.
