The big day is here! Or maybe not. Pakistan vs. India, Asia Cup 2018! Or maybe not. India just pulled off a Pakistan against Hong Kong. So it is Pakistan vs. Pakistan really in a couple of hours. It is also a home team vs. home team match, with India as hosts of this tournament and Pakistan almost home-izing the UAE cricket stadiums over the years. From some(one’s) lens, it is also India A vs. Pakistan A, with the former playing without the Virat Kohli and the latter without many experienced players.
Pakistan and India have faced each other eleven times in Asia Cup. That is eleven times that hospitals have been on high alert to deal with all sorts of emergencies. Pakistan has won five of those matches, as is the case with India. One of the matches was abandoned due to rain (Asia Cup 1997). Today’s match thus promises to be a stats changer, even if not a game changer.
Pakistan has a solid batting, bowling and fielding lineup this time around. This is something you do not get to say about Pakistan too often – not even once in more than 10 years to be precise. Fakhar Zaman and the Babar Azam pose humongous threat to the opposition. They were not up to their standards against Hong Kong, scoring ‘only’ 24 and 33 runs respectively, yet they would be eager to turn their fortunes around – both figuratively and literally, ‘perhaps’ – against India. Hasan Ali and Shadab Khan would be looking forward to ‘torturing’ Indian batsmen. Amir has not been included in the list because he can possibly sit out of the match after failing to perform competitively over the past few (read: many) matches – and because he does not need a specific mention anyway. (Who are we kidding really? Pakistan will only do without Amir if it desires to be magnanimous in compensating India for their self-inflicted wound of Virat’s loss.)
Indian team on the other hand is the strongest unit, on paper at least, in this tournament, and they are expected to bring out their best 11 against Pakistan, unlike what they did against Hong Kong. They are without Kohli for sure, but they are without Sachin Tendulkar too, and that is probably a bigger loss if you really think about it. Sachin has scored more runs (971) vs Pakistan than Kohli (613) in Asia Cup – no surprises there. Moreover, *dhol rolls* Sachin has taken more wickets (17) vs Pakistan in Asia Cup than any other player in the current Indian team – many surprises there. Indian batting lineup comprises a triple double centurion, the Captain Cool, and ODI’s top bowler (the Jasprit Bumrah). In fact, India’s bowling lineup contains four (Bumrah, Yadav, Chahal and Patel) of the top 15 bowlers in the format, compared to only one (Hasan Ali) for Pakistan. It appears as if India’s known weakness, its bowling unit, is far superior than Pakistan’s known strength, its bowling unit, and that today’s result would thus be a no-brainer. “Appears”. That’s exactly where we go 180 degrees wrong. One hundred and eighty! Degrees wrong.
Time for the predictions now: Pakistan for the win! Why? Because everything one thinks is not going to happen in a Pak vs Ind match, ends up happening at the Pak vs Ind match (invoking subjective probability rather than the frequentist one really… and you can ignore what I just wrote). A close match expected albeit not a very high scoring one, with team batting first accumulating less than 300 runs.
The big day is here! Or maybe not.