Persistent rains lashed Colombo just over an hour before the start of the reserve day. Shubman Gill raced past his second consecutive ODI half century as he and Rohit Sharma flattened the menacing Pakistan pace attack for the better part of the first 20 overs after Babar Azam won the toss and chose to bowl first.
Their opening partnership soared past 100 within the first 14 overs. Gill got to his half century in 37 balls while Rohit got there soon thereafter with a six, reaching his milestone in 42 balls.
Pakistan eventually came back strong with Shadab and Afridi dismissing Rohit and Gill respectively in consecutive games. It brought Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, with the latter taking the injured Shreyas Iyer’s place at No.4.
The partnership between the pair was on 24 off 38 balls for the third wicket when heavy rain suddenly made an appearance and forced the players off the ground.
Rain was always in the forecast for the day and while much of the day was sunny, once it started pouring, it never really stopped. While it paused for a long period, a wet patch on the outfield was taking a long time to be dried.
However, it looked like the umpires were happy with how it looked at one point and seemed set for a restart. Overs would have been reduced and Pakistan were most probably set to be presented with a 34-over chase but just before it looked the umpires were about to make an official announcement about the playing conditions, it started drizzling again. This forced the game to be called off and moved to the controversial reserve day.
The reserve day exists only for this particular fixture in the Super Four, which has led to a backlash of sorts from fans and commentators of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and even India and Pakistan.
Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha criticized the decision to award the reserve day only for the India-Pakistan match in a press conference, after which the Bangladesh and Sri Lanka cricket boards released statements saying that the tournament organizers had made the call after consulting with them.
Rains could have forced another washout between the two sides on reserve day as well. As per AccuWeather, there were chances of 80 percent rainfall around 5 pm in Colombo on Monday. The action, on the other hand, resumed at 4:40 pm local time, after an inspection.
India’s score stands at 147/2 in 24.1 overs
KL Rahul was on strike at 17 off 28 balls while Virat Kohli was at the other end on 8 off 16; Shadab Khan was bowling his seventh over.
Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill gave India a blazing start, putting up an opening stand of 121 runs.
KL Rahul and Virat Kohli were back at the crease and Shadab Khan was back to resume his over. Rahul and Kohli never left though and gave the Pakistan bowling attack some punishment.
Huge blows were in store for Pakistan and captain Babar Azam as star bowler Haris Rauf would not be bowling any further in this match as he felt a little discomfort in his right flank.
Paksitan’s other pacer Naseem went off in the 49th over of India’s innings, with an injury to his bowling shoulder, adding to Azam’s woes.
The party continued in Colombo for Kohli and Rahul, who both hit centuries at better than a run-a-ball, running hard twos, smashing sixes, using unorthodox glances in between exquisite cricketing shots.
While Rahul had a fairytale comeback with an unbeaten 111, after a while away due to injury, Kohli’s tally of runs in ODI cricket, went past 13,000 ODI runs with his unbeaten 122 and he became the fastest to get there, taking only 267 innings, 54 fewer than the great Sachin Tendulkar (321). Kohli is now also only two ODI hundreds away from levelling the master batsman’s total ODI century tally of 49.
Pakistan found themselves outplayed in all departments right from the outset, with India amassing 356 for 2 in their 50 overs across two days.
Pakistan were never in the hunt in their chase, losing regular wickets and collapsing either side of a lengthy rain break on Monday.
The target proved way beyond Pakistan’s reach as Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav wrote comebacks of their own with the former squeezing the Paksitani top order with swing and seam and the latter using his variations and improved speed through the air to run through the middle order.
Hardik Pandya struck in the first Powerplay, catching captain and number one ODI batsman Babar Azam off guard and hitting his off-stump through a surprisingly wide gap between bat and pad.
With a big score to fall back on, Yadav picked up his second five-wicket haul as Pakistan were routed for 128.
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