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In their first Asia Cup encounter, Pakistan didn’t
quite break the Indian batting order; 266 might have been a manageable total.
However, this is a fire that tends to burn out all the oxygen when three
Pakistani quicks slash through the top order and finish with 10 wickets between
them. Fast bowlers from Pakistan have an incandescent inclination as a species.
It was easy to wonder during the nine rainy days that followed the initial
skirmish. Can this India top order manage all that heat, fortunate as they are?
Pakistan’s quick bowlers swept in at Colombo over the
course of two afternoons, and for stretches of India’s innings, it appeared as
though the Indian hitters had never even considered this possibility. Shubman
Gill missed two good opportunities off Naseem Shah’s early bowling, but he
persisted and eventually brought down Shaheen Shah Afridi forcefully and
convincingly. For those who are still around and recall the 1990s, when he went
at Afridi, balls flew like his bat was spring loaded (at one of the original
owner’s preferred hunting sites).
Less convincing was Rohit Sharma, who took a long time
to even lay the bat on Naseem. But senior opening batters also do this when
there is moisture in the pitch and the seam is hard and new. They endure the
hunger there while awaiting more prosperous times, sometimes by luck. Rohit too
came alive after the early swing vanished and his eye was in. Rohit feasted on
three sixes and two fours in the span of five deliveries against Shadab Khan,
whose full tosses and half-trackers were like clusters of ripe mangoes weighing
the entire branch down.
The full, fruitful expression of India’s batting was
seen in the partnership between Virat Kohli and KL Rahul. This was run-making
that had been meticulously planned, flawlessly engineered, and ruthlessly
refined. Inefficiencies had been eliminated, and several redundancies had been
used to adjust for malfunctions. To reach 356 they didn’t even need the best
hitter in the game, Hardik Pandya.
However, their 233-run streak of success as a team had
an industrial feel to it. They marched quickly to their fifties and even faster
to their tonnes, just like modern hitters are meant to. They ran the fast twos
with accuracy, scored off even decent balls, and seldom failed to send the bad
ones hurtling to the boundary.
At moments, a faltering Pakistani onslaught resembled
more labourers supplying raw materials to the KL-Kohli machine than it did
opposition.
Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav’s assault will almost
always be entertaining, but the way they strangled Pakistan’s reaction and
transformed dot balls into wickets also reminded me of a dismissal assembly
line. Pakistan attempted to heave balls over the boundary but frequently failed
as India’s bats sent them rocketing.
All of this is not to argue that the Indian men’s
squad is without issues. They fell to Australia 2-1 in their most recent home
series.
But with this 228-run victory ahead of a home World
Cup, India had their Star Destroyers in high gear, their furnaces blazing, and
their engines revving. They dispatched a weak and depleted Pakistan with
incredible accuracy.