Team India Must Win

India is back in its own familiar position where the team must win against Srilanka or pray for rain or a Bangladesh victory against Pakistan to reach the finals. If Srilanka wins todays match and Pakistan wins against Bangladesh, both of them play the finals this Sunday as Pakistan has beaten India in the Super Four stage.

YounisKhan's flawless century and some good partnerships with opener Nasir and Misbah sealed a easy victory for Pakistan chasing 308. Indian hapless bowling and fielding and the killer of the match "Mr Curator" made sure that even scores of over 350+ could be a challenge to defend. One can not take away the credit from Pakistan batsmen for some superb display of controlled aggression which made the chase look very easy. Indian batsmen did well to reach 308 after at one stage tottering at 93-3, Dhoni played a class innings and was ably supported by Rohit Sharma and some contribution from Yuvraj and Irfan helped pep up the score. Yousuf Pathan failed again and the inform Raina played a bad shot early in the innings to get out cheaply. At the break, it looked that India had some advantage as the total was 300+ but after first 15-20 overs Pakistan was firmly in grip of the match and never gave any chance for India to come back.

Seems that in such flat tracks toss is going to decide on the result of the match, chasing seems to be the best thing to do in these flat wickets. I don't understand why Dhoni opted to bat first winning the toss even after successfully chasing 299 against Pakistan in the league phase. I know spat the reply would be that, if we would have won the match these things will not be talked about but thinking from cricketing aspects, India had a 3 day break and should be fresh to go all out with the fast bowlers, the whether is hot and humid under the lights and could drain you in the first 15-20 overs. We could see our players just could not run or field as they normally do under the heat, leave alone the brilliant fielding stuff, Ishant sharma was almost breaking down couple of times while fielding.

Its going to be a tough task on Dhoni to energize the players in just under 24 hours to take on the in form SriLankans in a must win match. India needs to re-think on the combination of the team to put up a better show today, Chawla has been just out of sorts in this tournament and feel ohja can be tried in his place and i would prefer to save Ishant Sharma for the future rather than playing him in this flat tracks. India's strength is its batting and if we win the toss we should be chasing.