Singapore: The heroics from Unmukt Chand and Sandeep Warrier helped India oust arch-rivals Pakistan in U-23 by three wickers in a Group A match of the ACC Emerging Teams Cup on Sunday. Unmukt played a sensible knock whereas Sandeep bagged three wickets which allowed India to post this win while chasing the modest total of 192 runs.
India had a brilliant start in this encounter as the Under-19 World Cup winning skipper Chand (61) and Lokesh Rahul (46) played with great deal of responsibility. This dazzling duo smacked 84 runs for the opening wicket.
Though, middle-order batsmen couldn’t make much contribution in this win, the knocks of Rahul and Chand were enough to pull off a victory with 13 balls to spare at the Kallang Ground.
The sole reason for the middle-muddle was some brilliant left arm spin wizardry of Raza Hasan who picked up three wickets which took this game to the wire. But valuable contribution of 23 runs from Indian skipper Suryakumar Yadav nullified the drama and got India a nail-biting win.
Earlier in the day, Indian team won the toss and elected to bowl first and their furious new ball attack of Sandeep Sharma and Warrier delivered the desired result as they reduced Pakistan to 3/22 in the first 10 overs of the match.
Openers Babar Azam (2) and Azeem Ghumman (3) departed in quick succession, while Bilawal Bhatti (7) too made his way back to the pavilion without troubling the scorers much.
Umar Waheed and Usman Salahuddin got Paksitan back into the contest with their crucial knocs of 46 and 61 respectively. This partnership of 85 runs brought a new lease of life to the Pakistan’s innings which eventually took them over 100 run mark.
But this pair didn’t last too long, as the left-arm spinner Akshar Patel picked up the wicket of Waheed and after that a downslide took the game away from Pakistan.
They kept losing the wickets at regular intervals and nail in the coffin came in with the dismissal of Salahuddin who was scalped by Warrier and caught by Baba Aparajith at covers in the 47th over of the innings. He departed after scoring 61 runs off 105-ball which saw just couple fo boundaries coming out from his willow.
Warrier ended his spell with an astonishing figures of 3/32 in nine overs whereas Sharma scalped couple of wickets for 39 runs.
In the ACC Emerging Teams Cup tournament, India are placed in Group A along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal. Group B comprises Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, UAE and Singapore.
The matches will be played at Kallang Cricket Ground and Singapore Cricket Ground from August 17-25.
India will next take on Nepal (August 20) and Afghanistan (August 22). The final will be played on August 25.