Sachin Tendulkar’s marvelous innings laid the foundation for a famous Indian victory over Pakistan. India thus maintained their unique record of not losing to Pakistan in a World Cup tournament and when one adds the wins in the World Championship of Cricket to that too then its a very impressive record indeed.

Pakistan’s total was boosted by a flurry of hitting in the final overs and they came out all guns firing to defend it they were countered by a volley of shots to which the bowlers and fielders could only stand, watch and silently applaud.

The fastest bowler in the world who had said that Indians don’t like pace was given a fitting response by being smashed for 18 runs in his first over including a six over deep cover point by the Little Champion. It’s not a question of pace, but how to bowl it that is crucial and Shoaib who has talked the talk has not been able to walk the walk in this event.

Surprisingly, the experienced Wasim Akram also got caught in the excitement and in trying to bowl quicker wasn’t able to control the line and gave enough width to the batsmen to cut him for runs.

It wasn’t just the bowlers but also Sehwag who got a bit carried away and lost his wicket in going for a cover drive and once again failed to convert his start into a big score.

Ganguly’s wicket off the next ball gave the Pakistanis renewed hope but they knew that as long as Tendulkar was there they were going to be in trouble.

The Little Champion produced such a brilliant array of shots that it is hard to pick one as the best. It’s almost as if in a great meal one is asked to say which morsel was the tastiest.

More than the shots, the joyful aspect of his innings is that he is once again batting like the Tendulkar the world knows and not just a player who scores runs without flair.

It was a pity that he missed out on a century but it was a special effort from Shoaib that got him. It climbed awkwardly and had him in a position where he wasn’t able to cover the extra bounce and keep the ball from ballooning up.

That he got close to a century in spite of a leg strain and not asking for a runner shows how fair he plays the game.

On the other hand Saeed Anwar who had also played superbly to get to a century did not field at all and even though he had the excuse of the hit on the helmet from Srinath he was well enough to do an interview for TV at the end of the Pakistan innings. In Anwar’s case, the cricketing world knows that he is not the swiftest of fielders in the game and it made sense for a faster fielder to come out after he had done his bit with the bat.

It’s not the first time these tactics have been used by teams and it wont be the last time either, unless the rules are made tighter. It’s not just batsmen who are poor fielders but also bowlers who after finishing their quota go off and have substitutes fielding for them for the rest of the innings that needs to be looked at too.

Pakistan got off to a solid start with Anwar and Umar tackling the pace of Srinath and Zaheer confidently. They were helped by the fact that Zaheer showed his nervousness and conceded wides and no-balls and lost control for a while. Once again a Pakistani batsman lost his wicket trying to wind up a bowler and young Umar having ‘chatted’ to Zaheer was bowled by the left-hander in the same over bringing back memories of how Aamir Sohail lost his wicket to Venkatesh Prasad in the 1996 World Cup encounter. Pakistan were helped by a partnership between Anwar and Youhanna and then later when Younis played a sensible knock. Toward the end there was good hitting by Rashid Latif and Wasim Akram that gave them 20 more runs than they would have anticipated.

All that was nullified however as the Little Champion and his look-a-like took the much vaunted attack to the cleaners with a display of batting that had not only the crowd at the ground but in the living rooms up on their feet, it was then the calm collected Dravid and the youthful Yuvraj who made sure that there were no alarms as India posted a famous win. Well done India and keep it up.

Arab News Sports 5 March 2003