It’s the game everyone has been waiting for – India versus Pakistan. Or perhaps not – the leading Twitter trend in India at the time of this writing is #WalkOutOfMatchWithPak. This reflects the frustration many Indians have with Pakistan’s support for terrorism and the fact that it gets ignored by the world community.
Many Indians are of the opinion that Indian captain Virat Kohli should simply forfeit this match and refuse to play the Pakistanis. But that is not going to happen. This India versus Pakistan game will go ahead as expected. The only question is if India will win or not.
India will be desperate to win, as would Pakistan. The team winning this battle will get a huge psychological boost. Indeed, a defeat is unthinkable. That could mean a national humiliation. This is not a typical cricket match. So who will win?
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India should win this game as they are the more talented side with more experienced players. They have a world class batting lineup with the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane and others.
They have star all-rounders in Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja. And now they have a mean pace attack, with the likes of Umesh Yadav – who is seriously fast and will lead the attack as well as Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaspreet Bumrah and Mohammad Shami.
India have no right to lose. They have a bunch of IPL superstars in their team. But the nature of cricket is that anyone could lose on a bad day, just as anyone could win on a good day. It’s sport, and there are no certainties of any sort.
Pakistan have a very good pace attack in Mohammad Amir and Wahab Riaz. They have a young batting line-up which lacks in experience but is highly talented. They have the leg spin of Shadab Khan, but could for an extra batsman in Faheem Ashraf because of the Indian bowling threat.
So to be fair, while India has the edge for sure, the result can go either way. We give India a 60% chance of winning.
Both teams will count on massive support from the Indian and Pakistani expat crowd at Birmingham. One only hopes that things will now boil over and the crowd maintains their cool. The security personnel at the Edgbaston will have to be on the alert and keep things under control.
The Teams
India: 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 MS Dhoni (wk), 6 Kedar Jadhav, 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Ravindra Jadeja, 9, 10 and 11 three out of R Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav
Pakistan: 1 Azhar Ali, 2 Ahmed Shehzad, 3 Babar Azam, 4 Mohammad Hafeez, 5 Shoaib Malik, 6 Sarfaraz Ahmed (capt & wk), 7 Imad Wasim, 8 Faheem Ashraf, 9 Mohammad Amir, 10 Wahab Riaz/Junaid Khan, 11 Hasan Ali
Match conditions
It’s been raining in England. We expect the ball to seam nicely because of all the cloud cover. The side batting first will have to put up a decent score and hope to get the better of the Duckworth and Lewis system.
Watch India take on Pakistan at 3 pm, Sunday live on Star Sports!
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