A dominant India beat Pakistan by 89 runs via Duckworth-Lewis method in a rain-hit group match at Old Trafford to maintain their unbeaten World Cup record against their arch-rivals on Sunday.
Put into bat in a stop-start match, India posted a commanding 336-5 with Rohit Sharma (140) smashing his second century of the tournament.
Skipper Virat Kohli (77) and KL Rahul (57) also got fifty but Mohammad Amir's (3-47) tight death-overs spell denied India a 350-plus total in the sold out contest between the arch-rivals.
A century stand between Fakhar Zaman (62) and Babar Azam (48) kept alive Pakistan's hopes until they suffered a batting collapse and finished on 212-6 in 40 overs chasing a revised target of 302.
Kuldeep Yadav, Hardik Pandya and Vijay Shankar claimed two wickets each for India who now have a 7-0 record against Pakistan in World Cup.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was prepared to stand by any government decisoin and called on the International Cricket Committee (ICC) to “sever ties with countries from which terrorism emanates”, while India cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar said losing points to Pakistan would be painful but added he would support whatever the BCCI decided to do.
Thankfully talk of a boycott has disappeared and the game will go ahead, weather permitting.
Here's how the two camps have been preparing:
Virat Kohli: “For us, nothing in the changing room is different. Nothing changes in our mindset. We are a top side in the world because of the cricket that we played, and we always need to remember that, and our focus is absolutely that.”
Mickey Arthur: “I'm telling our players in the dressing room, you could be a hero tomorrow. Your careers are going to be defined by a moment in the game. You do something incredible tomorrow, you'll be remembered forever."
Stay tuned for the teams and the result of the toss at around 10:00am
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I'm telling our players in the dressing room, you could be a hero tomorrow. Your careers are going to be defined by a moment in the game.
You do something incredible tomorrow, you'll be remembered forever. I saw some stats which said the soccer World Cup final attracted 1.6bn viewers. Tomorrow is likely to get 1.5bn. It doesn't get bigger than that. It doesn't get more exciting.
We've got 15 incredible cricketers in that dressing room, and we keep stressing to them: How do you want to be remembered?
