India bat after delayed start
India won the toss and elected to bat first at the Sardar Patel Gujarat Stadium after early morning dew had delayed the start by an hour, reducing the contest to 48 overs a side
The Bulletin by Dileep Premachandran
12-Apr-2005
India won the toss and elected to bat first at the Sardar Patel Gujarat Stadium after early morning dew had delayed the start by an hour, reducing the contest to 48 overs a side. The lunch interval was reduced to half an hour and on a surface expected to produce a small mountain of runs - neither team had chased successfully so far in this series - it appeared a good toss to win. With the series beautifully poised at 2-1 in India's favour, the stage was set for a titanic tussle - the sun beating down and the stadium packed to the girders.
India made two changes to the side that lost so meekly at Jamshedpur. Lakshmipathy Balaji, who had recovered from a side strain, returned in place of Irfan Pathan, and Murali Kartik got his first outing of the series, replacing Harbhajan Singh. Pakistan kept faith in the XI that were emphatic winners by 106 runs in the previous game.
For some of India's marquee names, it was a chance to play themselves back into something resembling form. Between them, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif had managed just 96 runs in the first three games, leaving Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid and Mahendra Singh Dhoni to carry the batting burden.
After missing out on a Test match, this was Ahmedabad's chance to prove that they didn't lag behind in the hospitality stakes. The security outside the stadium and inside the ground was certainly formidable, with commandos and the local police present in the thousands to ensure that the match passed by without incident - away from the pitch.
India: 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Sachin Tendulkar, 3 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), 4 Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly (capt), 6 Yuvraj Singh, 7 Mohammad Kaif, 8 Mrali Kartik, 9 Lakshmipathy Balaji, 10 Zaheer Khan, 11 Ashish Nehra.
Pakistan: 1 Salman Butt, 2 Shahid Afridi, 3 Younis Khan, 4 Inzamam-ul-Haq (capt), 5 Yousuf Youhana, 6 Abdul Razzaq, 7 Kamran Akmal (wk), 8 Arshad Khan, 9 Iftikhar Anjum, 10 Naved-ul-Hasan, 11 Danish Kaneria.
Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Cricinfo.