On this day: In 2007 India ‘bowl out’ Pakistan in T20 World Cup
On 14th September 2007, India finally got a chance to take the field in the inaugural edition of the World T20 after three days of action. Their campaign was set to begin a day further against Scotland. However, the rain that entered after Scotland elected to bowl first abandoned the game. India, Pakistan and Scotland were present in Group D and Pakistan qualified to Super-8s with a 51-run win over Scotland. India needed to not lose against Pakistan by a huge margin to qualify for the next round
The Indian team had played just one T20I before the tournament and only seven players from that game featured against the arch-rivals. Moreover, they had a lot of youngsters in their ranks and MS Dhoni was leading the team without any prior experience of even captaining his domestic teams Jharkhand/Bihar. India’s nightmares from the 2007 CWC seemed to return as Mohammad Asif’s opening spell shook up their batting.
A derailed start
Asif took a wicket each in his first four overs as India stumbled to 36/4 by the 7th over. But a counter-attacking fifty by Robin Uthappa put them at 82/4 by the end of the 12th over. Uthappa got out scoring a 39-ball 50 while Irfan Pathan’s consecutive sixes off Shahid Afridi in the 16th over got India to 111/6. Dhoni finished with a laboured 31-ball 33 as India crawled to 141/9 in the 20 overs.
Pakistan needed to chase the target of 142 in only 14.4 overs to knock India out but a spell of rain in the innings interval provided assistance to the Indian pacers. RP Singh and S Sreesanth bowled seven overs between them upfront where Pakistan managed only 42/1. Pathan and Ajit Agarkar then broke the back of the chase to help India qualify for the Super-8s. Their efforts kept Pakistan down to 100/5 at the end of the 17th over before Misbah-ul-Haq began to find boundaries.
Misbah smashed a six and four in the 18th over bowled by Harbhajan after Afridi mistimed a full toss. As many as three boundaries were hit in the 19th over bowled by Agarkar. Pakistan needed 12 runs from the last over where Misbah smashed boundaries on the 2nd and 4th deliveries to level the scores. He got beaten in a cut shot on the penultimate ball and was run-out on the final delivery trying to sneak in the winning run which saw the match end in a tie.
The Bowl out
According to the tournament and T20I rules, a bowl-out took place to determine the winner of the match. Each team had to nominate five players and the team with the most hits after five attempts was going to be declared as the winner. India nominated Sehwag, Harbhajan, Uthappa, Sreesanth and Pathan while Arafat, Gul, Afridi, Tanvir and Asif were Pakistan’s five players.
MS Dhoni wanted Rohit Sharma to be one of India’s five as he hit the stumps during the bowl-out sessions. Robin Uthappa’s name was picked after they got to know that the players in the playing XI can be part of the tie-breaker. India’s first three players Sehwag, Harbhajan and Uthappa were at the stumps while Pakistan’s Arafat, Gul and Afridi missed it by a long way. Thus, the bowl-out came to an end after just three attempts as India took a 3-0 winning lead to register a historic win over Pakistan.
