NEW YORK: The hotels in the Nassau County area in Long Island are filling up fast. The local authorities have organized a watch-party for all those who have not got tickets for the India-Pakistan clash in a sprawling park not too far away from the centre of action. There could be about 6,000 in there, in addition to the 35,000 at the ground –not a single ticket being left unsold.
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Predictably, the Indian fans are likely to outnumber their Pakistan counterparts.And now that Pakistan have been beaten by United States of America, there’s a sense of celebration among the Indian fans –the arch-rivals should be easy meat.
But there’s a little catch. The US win might just have thrown a virtually ‘two-team group’ completely open. Imagine a situation where Babar Azam‘s boys happen to beat India on a lottery of a pitch at Nassau County Ground and then go on to beat Canada and Ireland in their last two matches. In that case, India will be in a must-win situation against a high-on-confidence USA and Canada. And even if Rohit & Co. finish the job, it can come down to Net Run Rate, if the hosts go past Ireland too and leave three teams on three wins each.
When the tournament started, no one expected such a situation –the Indo-Pak game being nothing more than a prestige fight without too much consequence on the final outcome of the group, other than probably the top-two placings.
While Rohit’s boys have to be careful, the situation is way graver for Pakistan. They are in an absolutely must-win situation against an opposition that has had the better of them in recent times.
In addition to that, Pakistan don’t have experience of playing in New York, where India have been camped for the last couple of weeks and have already played two games. The pitch here is truly difficult to bat on and ICC has already acknowledged that it isn’t the best for T20 cricket. What’s worrying is the up and down nature of the track and even though the world body has promised to work on it ahead of the big-ticket clash, one wonders if it’s case of too little too late.
As we have seen till now, the toss can become extremely crucial on this pitch. Due to the 10.30 am starts, the white ball tends to do a lot more in the first session and that can just make the Pakistan pace quartet of Shaheen Afridi, Mohammed Amir, Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah a little more dangerous than they actually are.
All four failed to rise to the occasion against USA, while spinner Shadab Khan struggled to take wickets in the middle-overs, which allowed US to go for a final assault.
“We are better than that in the bowling and we know that. We did not take wickets in the first six overs and in the middle overs, if your spinner is not taking wickets, then the pressure is on you,” captain Babar said after the loss to USA, taking a dig at five of his bowlers.
He was particularly upset with Rauf on the field when the experienced pacer tried bowling a yorker in the last ball with the mid-off up and ended up bowling a low full-toss, which was sent to the fence by Nitish Kumar to force a Super Over.
But on slightly helpful conditions, this same group of bowlers has the habit and the ability of coming back from the dead. For starters, they have the pace that can trouble the much-vaunted Indian batting line-up, if they are to hit the right lengths. It’s on India to keep the cornered tigers secluded in the corner so that they can breathe slightly easy going into the last two games of their United States leg.
