SHARJAH: India, reeling under an initial onslaught by Pakistan’s openers Saeed Anwar and Saleem Yousuf, recovered their aplomb brilliantly, to restrict Pakistan to a moderate 235 for the loss of nine wickets off the full quota of 50 overs, in the second Australasia cup pool “B” match at the Sharjah cricket stadium Friday.

This meant that the Indians were left with the task of getting 236 runs for victory at an asking rate of 4.72 runs to register their first win of the competition in two games.

The corner stone of the Pakistani effort was a grand knock of 62 off 93 balls by wicket keeper turned makeshift opening batsman, Saleem Yousuf. He combined with Anwar to give the Pakistani innings a dream start

However, spinners Ravi Shastri and Anil Kumble bowled beautifully in mid innings, and put the brakes on the Pakistani charge. Shastri captured two wickets for 36in his 10 overs and Kumble got one for 33 off the same number of overs. Former skipper Srikkanth also bowled tidily to give away only 19 runs in five overs.

Pakistan might have been in dire straits towards the end of their knock, for Javed Miandad’s laborious 37 consumed as many as 74 balls and he could not reach the fence even once

However a flurry of strokes from Ejaz Ahmed, demoted in the batting order to number seven brought the Pakistanis 40 precious runs in the last five overs. Ejaz made 32 off 29 balls with three fours on the slow outfield and one big six

When the Pakistani openers put on 57 off the first 10 overs, and took their stand to 73 off 14.3 overs, things looked bleak for the Indians. It took a magnificent diving catch by Kapil Dev at short mid-on to bring Anwar’s cameo 31 ball knock of 37 to an end. In the process, the all-rounder injured his bowling hand, and could not be called upon to bowl his usual quota of overs during the ending slog phase.

In so cavalier a manner had the openers treated the trundling of Kapil Dev and Prabhakar that it gave little indication of what was to follow. The early departure of Salim Malik, bowled by an arm ball from Shastri slowed the scoring rate down considerably.

Miandad was extremely scratchy at the start and just could not get the bowlers away, and it was left to the well set Yousuf to do the bulk of the scoring in the 40 run third wicket stand. But even Yousuf had to watch Shastri carefully.

Article extracted from this publication >> May 4, 1990