Who said what: World reacts to India's thumping win over Pakistan
The much-awaited encounter between the two arch-rivals turned out to be a dead rubber as the Indian cricket team completely outhustled the Team Pakistan as a marvellous bowling display and a glorious batting performance by the Men In Blue made the team win it’s second ODI match in 24 hours.
Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat first. The openers weren’t able to provide a good start as they couldn't handle the pressure built by the Indian bowlers and lost both the wickets on the score of just 3 runs. Fakhar Zaman, who was the Player of the match when India and Pakistan locked horns last time, was dismissed for a 9-ball duck by Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
After two early dismissals, Shoaib Malik and Babar Azam came to rescue but Kuldeep Yadav dismissed Babar Azam in the 22nd over of the game. Pakistan couldn't recover from there as a wonderful bowling effort by the Indian bowlers started to take wickets at regular intervals and bowled the opposition out for 162.
India chasing 163, had a scintillating start as Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma had a partnership of 86 runs for the first wicket. On one hand, the Indian Captain, who scored a fifty, was dismissed by Shadab Khan in the 14th over. Whilst, Shikhar Dhawan, on the other hand, continued to do the damage. Although he was also soon dismissed by Faheem Ashraf the damage was already done.
Pakistan couldn't make a comeback as Ambati Rayudu and Dinesh Karthik played with consummate ease and went on to finish the match as a long hop by Shoaib Malik off the last ball of 29th over was smashed by Rayudu for a four which sealed an 8-wicket win for the No. 2 ranked ODI team.
Here is how the cricketing fraternity reacted after this convincing win.
Sarfraz Ahmed: The start was not at all good. We lost two wickets in the first five overs. We got some momentum in the middle but again lost wickets and could not recover. We batted poorly and all of us played poor shots to get out. We had prepared for the two spinners but the third one chipped in with wickets. We will come back better prepared next time.
Rohit Sharma: We wanted to learn from the mistakes which we made in the last game. Today was a great game for the bowling department because I knew the conditions weren't great for it. But we kept the conditions aside and did the job. We stuck to our plans. We wanted to make sure not to make things easy for them. The first few overs disciplined and the spinners took on from there. It was important for us to just stick to the plans which the guys did.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar: It was a great bowling effort. Great to see Jadhav step up in the absence of Hardik Pandya. It's important to bowl back of a length and try to hit the stumps, give yourselves a chance. Key is not to give too many runs and force the batsmen to make mistakes. Perhaps due to the heat, Hardik got injured as he was playing in England and couldn't adjust to the different conditions here. Not easy for the bowlers.
“It’s raining records here at Dubai!”
Mohammed Shami feels proud of his team.
Sehwag congratulates team India for their second win in a row.
VVS appreciates the Indian team for playing two consecutive matches in two days.