India Vs. Pakistan -- A Dream Final

Any India Pakistan match is special - add to it that it is a final of a World Cup just makes it special indeed. Both the teams performed very badly in the ICC World Cup earlier this year and now they have reached the final! It is very surprising to see the performance of Indian cricket team without a coach.

From the match perspective, I just hope that the match lives up to the hype of a final and that ICC gets some "umpires" who know rules of cricket. Nobody is interested in seeing blunders from umpires like in 7th ODI against England.

Here is some famous quotes:

Yuvraj Singh: "India-Pakistan is always a huge competition. It's just like a dream for us."

Malik: "In Pakistan we have lots of talent which, Inshallah, we are going to utilise and, Inshallah, the Pakistan team will be number one very soon."

Dhoni: "The pressure will be immense, not on us though because I don't believe in taking pressure and none of my team do either".

आज हर हिन्दुस्तानी को याद आएगा की वो एक हिन्दुस्तानी है
आज सबके मन में अपने देश के लिए प्यार जागेगा
आज हर हिन्दुस्तानी भारत की जीत के लिए अपने भगवान् से दुआ और अल्लाह से प्रार्थना करेगा

एक आम हिन्दुस्तानी दो बातें सहें नहीं कर सकता :
१) अपने देश पर वार
२) क्रिकेट में हार

Chak de India!

Chak de India!

India approached the previous two games with nothing to lose, going out there and expressing themselves freely. Now they are faced with a situation where victory is nearby. Dravid warned against complacency but admitted that the team had come some distance since the shattering scenes at Old Trafford. "I knew we really had to fight hard. We had our backs to the wall," said Dravid. "We had to script a really good comeback."

Wednesday was the second time India successfully chased over 300 in England. The first such feat was, in fact, at Lord's in the 2002 NatWest Series final. The target then was 326.



India have not lost to England at Lord's since 1975

Flintoff returns to tackle India openers

England (likely): 1 Alastair Cook, 2 Matt Prior (wk), 3 Ian Bell, 4 Kevin Pietersen, 5 Paul Collingwood (capt), 6 Owais Shah, 7 Andrew Flintoff, 8 Luke Wright, 9 Stuart Broad, 10 James Anderson, 11 Monty Panesar.

India (likely): 1 Sourav Ganguly, 2 Sachin Tendulkar, 3 Gautam Gambhir, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Rahul Dravid (capt), 6 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), 7 Robin Uthappa, 8 Ajit Agarkar, 9 Piyush Chawla, 10 Ramesh Powar, 11 Zaheer Khan.

Hoo Ha India, Aaya India!