Malik's favourite opposition

Shoaib Malik has been under immense pressure recently: his captaincy was apparently questioned by his board chairman, and the team hasn't always delivered against the top sides. All that, though, has done little to affect his batting, as was evident from his outstandingly paced hundred against India in the Asia Cup. It was upstaged by some superb batting by the Indians later in the evening, but Shoaib's century - his first as captain in ODIs - was an excellent illustration of his nous as a one-day batsman.

He isn't the most glamorous player Pakistan has produced but Malik is slowly going up the list of Pakistan's most effective ODI batsmen. The Indians have been especially lucky opponents for him - three of his six hundreds, and ten of the 28 fifties, have come against them. (The combination of Asia Cup and India has been especially potent - in his only previous such game, in 2004, he scored 143, which remains his highest ODI score.) Had he made 13 more runs before retiring hurt yesterday, Malik would have pushed his ODI average against India up to 50. As it stands, the numbers still look mighty impressive: among Pakistan batsmen who have scored at least 500 runs against India, his average is fourth, with only Salman Butt, Javed Miandad and Zaheer Abbas in front of him.

The seam, swing and bounce overseas clearly don't suit Malik - he averages 25.22 from ten games in Australia, and 8.16 in 12 ODIs in England - but on the flat surfaces of the subcontinent he transforms into a prolific batsman. Among players who have scored at least 2500 runs in the subcontinent (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Sharjah), his average is bettered only by five batsmen. All six of his centuries have come on the subcontinent, as have 22 out of 28 fifties.

Leading a Pakistan team can never be easy, but it's a task Malik has handled with aplomb so far. Far from affecting his batting adversely, the captaincy has in fact brought out the best in him as a batsman. In the 28 games in which he has led, Malik averages an impressive 45.45, which, among captains who have led in at least 25 matches, is next only to India's current captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Malik's challenge, though, will be to sustain these performances the way Inzamam-ul-Haq, his predecessor did, and to become a much bigger batting force in tougher conditions overseas.

A close finish at last
Over the last week, one-day series in three different continents have thrown up different kinds of matches. The Asia Cup has easily been the most tedious so far, with the minnows coming up way short against the top teams in farcical contests; Australia's first game against West Indies produced a compelling debut performance but a one-sided result; the most engrossing contests, though, came in England, where two evenly matched sides did plenty to raise the stock of one-day cricket, which has taken a severe beating over the last few years, and more since Twenty20 made a triumphant entry into the cricket calendar.

The last-ball finish in the fourth ODI between England and New Zealand was much-needed relief from the complete mismatches through the first three days of the Asia Cup. The problem for ODIs is that such games have come far too infrequently of late.

Since March 2007, when the last World Cup began, there have been very few close finishes - defined, for the purpose of this exercise, as matches that were won by less than 25 runs, by fewer than two wickets, or with six or fewer balls to spare. In 178 completed ODIs during this period, four games were tied, but only 30 others could be classified as close games according to the criteria above. On the other hand, 45 games were utter routs, with the victory margin being greater than 80 runs or eight wickets.

ODI games from March 2007 to June 25, 2008

Completed matches	Close finishes (including ties)*	Win margin>80 runs	Win margin>8 wkts
178	34	26	19

* As defined in the text above.

Over the 14 previous months, from January 2006 to February 2007, there were relatively more close games: 55 out of 204 completed matches met the criteria listed above, which works out to almost 27%, up from 19% over the last 16 months.