India 2-102 (Shikhar Dhawan 48, Virat Kohli 22*, Wahab Riaz 1-20) beat Pakistan 165 (Asad Shafiq 41, Umar Amin 27*, Bhuvneshwar Kumar 2-19, Ravindra Jadeja 2-30) by 8 wickets (D/L method)

The spirited Indian side kept their unbeaten record in their group while bulldozing their arch rivals, Pakistan, easily by a mammoth margin of eight wickets.

The match was reduced to 40 overs after the rain interruption and Pakistan managed 165 before their innings was folded back with two balls to spare. The game was continuously disturbed by the weather and the targets given to India (D/L method) were as follows:

1-   40 overs – 168 runs

2-   36 overs – 157 runs

3-   22 overs – 102 runs

India blasted 102 for the loss of just two wickets in 19.1 overs.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar (India) was declared ‘Player of the match’ for his economical bowling spell of 2-19 in 10 overs.

The 10^th match of the ICC Champions Trophy was held on Saturday, June 15, 2013, at Edgbaston, Birmingham.

MS Dhoni won the toss for the Blue Shirts and invited the Green Shirts to bat first under cloudy conditions. The decision paid off instantly as Pakistan lost their first wicket for just four runs and Kamran Akmal along with Mohammad Hafeez tried to stabilise the innings. They kept on cruising with regular boundaries and enhanced the score to 50 in 12 overs as Mohammad Hafeez was caught behind by Dhoni off Bhuvneshwar Kumar for 27. Kamran Akmal followed him six runs later for 21 as the skipper of Pakistan, Misbah-ul-Haq and Asad Shafiq stopped the invasion of the rival bowlers.

They found it hard to score the runs freely and were unable to get a single boundary until the 19^th over. There were few interruptions during the game and the first hundred of the innings appeared on board in the 26^th over. Misbah-ul-Haq surrendered at 110 after 26.4 overs at his individual score of 22 runs and that was the beginning of the disaster for the Green Shirts. Asad Shafiq top scored with 41, Umar Amin secured his end for 27 as the entire team was bowled out for 165 in 39.4 overs.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja were the successful bowlers with two wickets each.

India started off reasonably well with their regular openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan since they scored 28 runs in six overs with two boundaries from the willows of each batsman. The weather threatened the game time and again but the Men in Blue kept on marching briskly as per the required target. Rohit Sharma was caught by Misbah-ul-Haq off Saeed Ajmal for 18 as the total touched 58 in 10.4 overs. Virat Kohli joined in next with Dhawan who dispatched two back to back fours on the first two balls of the 15^th over but was caught by Nasir Jamshed at third man off Wahab Riaz for 48 from 41 balls with 5 fours.

Virat Kohli and Dinesh Karthik remained unbeaten for 22 and 11 runs as the Blue Shirts powered 2-102 in 19.1 overs and reached the destination.

India won the third and final successive match of the pool ‘B’ by a huge margin of eight wickets. They grasped six points whereas the out of colour Pakistani team was unable to win any match and could not pick any point.