Cricket has won although series ended in draw. Pakistan and India both winning one match.
Both teams played superb. Performance was worth watching. Both the matches were just nail biters. One sided matches are never that interesting. Twists in matches between rivals like Pakistan and India or Australia and England are always crowd pullers. So were the stadiums full in Banglore and Ahmadabad. Although India had advantage of home crowed, such advantages create unnecessary pressure as well. There were very few Pakistani supporters and pin drop silence was observed whenever match was in Pakistan’s favor.
Banglore -Pakistan had lost quarter final of World-cup 1996 to India in this city. Pakistan has won its first ever T20 in the same venue against India. It was December 25, 2012. Pakistan was celebrating Quaid-e-Azam’s (founder of Pakistan) birthday and it was Christmas day. We definitely consider it as gift from the team. Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal and Muhammad Hafeez performed well. In the last over, Shoaib’s six reminded us of Miandad’s six in Sharja in late 80’s.
A match being won by Pakistan against India on an occasion reminds of one ODI played at Kolkata in 2004-05. It was played just a day before EiD and Indians were celebrating platinum jubilee of BCCI. Salman Butt and Inamam-ul-Haq had paved way for Pakistan convincing victory against India.
Pakistan lost 2nd match by only 11 runs. Fighting hard to chase the total. India had played well. Dhoni and Yuraj were awesome on the pitch. 192 was certainly a difficult target to chase. Opening pair from Pakistan performed very well against general public hopes. Later, Muhammad Hafeez played sensational innings; scored 2nd fastest fifty from Pakistan in only 23 balls. Dinda’s last two overs actually claimed the match for India when Pakistan had high hopes with many wickets remaining.