Five months on from the most traumatic period in their history, Pakistan have reached the ICC World Twenty20 final and are fully worth their place in the Johannesburg showpiece. They have bowled with variation, batted with verve and, most surprisingly, fielded well at crucial moments. The usually mercurial team has been the epitome of consistency; now they need to hold it together for one more match.
That’s Andrew McGlashan previewing today’s 20 Twenty World Cup final between old rivals India and Pakistan at Cricinfo. The match starts at 5:00 PM Pakistani Standard Time, I’ll try and see if I can live blog the match here, even though the match timings coincide with Asr and Maghrib prayers. But I’ll try nevertheless.
The key in my humble opinion if we bat first is going to be setting a target above 170, anything less, with the kind of from Yuvraj Singh is in, may simply not be enough, despite the good bowling form of Gul and Afridi. Mohammad Asif struggled bowling at the death in the semi-finals, and it would be foolish if Malik and co. haven’t learned their lesson from that outing against the Kiwis. He should bowl out his quota of 4 overs in the start. Gul and Sohail Tanveer or any one of the spinners, Hafeez, Afridi or even Fawad Alam can do the job at the end.
Conversely if we bowl first, getting Yuvraj in as early as possible (which means getting early wickets) and then getting him out as early as possible (which means not allowing India’s middle order to rebuild after taking early wickets) will be key to restricting India to a score under 170. We’ve chased down scores in that region twice before in the tournament and with the middle order in good form and Imran Nazir starting to come along as well, anything in that region should be do-able again. We’ll have to watch out for RP Singh and Sreesanth though, Harbajjan Singh, given Malik and Misbah’s natural strength against spin bowling, shouldn’t be as much of a problem. And neeedless to say, no bowl outs please. It should be a well fought contest over all and I look forward in anticipation.
More previews from around the blogosphere:
Scott from The Corridor : “A dream final”
Cricinfo Podcast by Tony Greig: “Advantage India”
King Cricket: “[…] a final that all cricket tournaments want”
Atif Abdul-Rahman at Cricket Bloggers of Pakistan: “who shall be the King of the Jungle?”
Adnan at Adnan’s Crazy Blogging World: “Will history repeat it self?”
Adil Najam at Pakistaniat: “Neither team goes in as favorites“
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Kaleidoscope 
for God sake push out younis khan