Tendulkar holding strong in match against Pakistan

Mar 30, 2011 |

Mohali

Tags:

Sachin Tendulkar led a charmed life as he reached fifty against Pakistan in the World Cup semi-final on Wednesday.

'The Little Master' came into this match needing just one more century to become the first batsman to score a hundred international hundreds - he has 51 in Tests and 48 in one-dayers.

But off-spinner Saeed Ajmal nearly had him out twice in successive balls for 23, seeing an lbw decision overturned on review before Kamran Akmal's stumping appeal failed to convince the third umpire.

Then, on 27, Tendulkar pulled Pakistan captain and leg-spinner Shahid Afridi hard to short mid-wicket only for Misbah-ul-Haq to drop the two-handed catch.

He was dropped again, on 45, when he mistimed a drive off Afridi and Younus Khan at mid-off, after juggling the ball, failed to hold a relatively straightforward chance.

Tendulkar completed a 67-ball fifty when he struck Afridi through extra-cover for his eighth four.

After a blazing start at Mohali, India is now struggling as Pakistan cut through the top order.

Wahab Riaz came to the verge of hat-trick glory, when he dismissed Kohli, who came out after Mohammad Hafeez got Gautam Gambhir stumped, at 9 and Yuvraj Singh for naught.

Earlier, despite Virender Sehwag's dismissal slowing down the run flow, India cruised to 100 in 15 overs, with Sachin Tendulkar and Gambhir anchoring the show well.

Viru started the pyrotechnics off ‘late’, in the third ball of the first over instead of the first ball, and amassed 21 runs in the third over by Umar Gul, cracking five fours in the process.

Teams:
India: Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt/wkt), Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel.

Pakistan: Mohammad Hafeez, Kamran Akmal (wkt), Asad Shafiq, Younus Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq, Umar Akmal, Shahid Afridi (capt), Abdul Razzaq, Wahab Riaz, Umar Gul, Saeed Ajmal.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/64787" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-af1f31ab75eb3375b72723e40c5103e5" value="form-af1f31ab75eb3375b72723e40c5103e5" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86554110" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>