Nervous Pakistan try to focus

Pakistan are nervous. Real nervous.

So nervous that a group of players who missed the team's evening curfew by 45 minutes earlier in the tour are on their last warning for misbehaviour on this trip.

So nervous that a usually gregarious team has been clammed up from talking formally to the media until the captain Misbah-ul-Haq speaks as obligated on Saturday.

So nervous that at their main nets session on Friday morning only a handful of towering blows were aimed at the bowlers, as the batsmen worked fastidiously on their techniques lest anyone be made to look silly against India on Sunday.

In all this there are signs that Pakistan may be too keyed up for this match, a contest no less an authority than Wasim Akram believes will dictate which of his homeland or India will find the confidence and resolution to make a genuine bid for the World Cup over the next six weeks. But it may also speak of an earnest attempt to find the sort of focus and purpose that only occasionally settles on a Pakistan line-up, as it so memorably did in 1992.

Through the team can be sensed a familiar refrain: let's just get through Sunday, then things will get easier. Given the shape of their draw, it is a sensible conclusion.

In 2011, the meeting with India was saved for the semi-finals. In 1999 it was the Super Sixes, in 1996 the quarter-finals. The two times they met in the group stages were in 2003 and back in 1992, the last time the tournament took place down under. Then it was at an SCG more sparsely populated than Adelaide will be. Javed Miandad made the newspapers for his theatrical imitation of Kiran More's appealing, but India won. The result had no bearing on the outcome of what would become Pakistan's Cup.

There are other reasons for Pakistani optimism. India have been operating on what feels like one cylinder for most of their lengthy Australian tour. Only this week against Afghanistan did they finally manage to win a match. As MS Dhoni has freely admitted, his team have a longer tail than he would like, while their bowling has never suggested it will scale any sort of heights down under. The onus is on Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and company to score anything and everything.

It should not be forgotten either that Pakistan were victorious when last these two sides met in an ODI, at the Asia Cup in Dhaka a little less than a year ago. India were Dhoni-less if not quite rudderless, and Shahid Afridi grasped his moment to turn an equation of nine to win from four balls into three runs in credit with two deliveries to spare. That result was celebrated as an example of the sort of crazed beauty inherent in Pakistan cricket, but there are some steadier hands who may play a role in Adelaide.

While many have commented at the relative weakness of Pakistan's bowling attack when lined up against those assembled for previous World Cups, they have in Yasir Shah the best legspinner in the tournament - unless Imran Tahir lands everything in its right place. Shane Warne was impressed by Yasir's work against Australia in Test matches last October, and his combination of bounce, spin and accuracy should find sympathetic responses from antipodean pitches, much as Mushtaq Ahmed did 23 years ago.

In the batting order, Misbah-ul-Haq and Umar Akmal form the sort of middle-order hinge likely to swing plenty of matches towards their side, allowing Afridi the license to play without any thoughts beyond where he can deposit the next ball. What is needed primarily is a little more solidity at the top of the order, a task not beyond the capability of Nasir Jamshed and Ahmed Shehzad and certainly well within the repertoire of Younis Khan. Shehzad was struck on the forearm during nets on Friday, but scans have cleared him of anything more than bruising.

Of course the size of the occasion will be daunting. Just to make sure Adelaide Oval will be full to bursting, World Cup organisers released an extra 3000 tickets to those on a lengthy waiting list for the match on Friday, and watched them disappear in minutes. Nary a hotel room nor flight into Adelaide is available at anything less than the most exorbitant rate imaginable, while the television audience for the game will doubtless set new records.

So Pakistan had good reason to be nervous as they prepared, but no more so than India. All they need now is Sunday.