Yesterday was the best Indo-Pak cricket encounter I have ever watched in my life. Although it was such a high octane World Cup semi-final over-hyped by media and the presence of diplomats, Prime Ministers of both the nations, celebrities etc, the players did not lose their cool at all. Sehwag started it off with his usual spirit putting a score of 50 in first five overs. Then Pakistani bowlers taken the game under control with superb spin and seam combination from Ajmal, Hafeez and Wahab Riaz and restricted India to a score of 260 in a ground where people don't consider a score below 300 as defendable. But Indian bowlers fought really well specially Nehra and Munaf. There were lots of doubts when Dhoni included Nehra in place of Ashwin (who was performing very well in fielding as well as bowling), but Nehra did not let the pressure get into him and performed much beyond expectations. Yuvi and Bhajji also did a great job with their spin attack. From Indian side it was a perfect team-work which led them to victory, but in the Pakistan camp, there was one guy who performed exceptionally. Yes he is none other than he young bowler Wahab Riaz..I don't remember when I saw such reverse swing before. He was the best performer in yesterday's match although that was not enough for Pakistan to win.
One thing which surprised me was the friendly attitude of both the teams during the entire course of the game. In every Indo-Pak encounters I have ever seen, there were couple of heated exchanges between players and of course people were expecting similar drama yesterday as well. But the players played with such a good spirit that there were no rooms for such vulgarity. The friendly gestures, comments from players like Afridi, Ajmal were really mind-blowing. It was a victory of cricket I would say, not just a victory for India. Hope these two neighboring nations will show such spirit both in and off the field in future :)
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