Bring on the battle of the middle overs
We all know that Pakistan don't beat India. We know that's like a thing. Sure, before the tournament, Sarfraz Ahmed talked up Pakistan's record against India in the Champions Trophy, then his team proceeded to play as if cricket were a new sport to them and India won by over 120 runs without even playing their best. Yes, there was that Asia Cup miracle from Shahid Afridi a few years ago, but overall India have become this limited-overs machine while Pakistan are a scrapyard of new and used parts.
Pakistan seem to turn up to every global tournament in disarray. Saeed Ajmal pulled out of the 2015 World Cup due to his action, Mohammad Amir was not yet back, and Umar Akmal kept wicket. This time Umar Akmal was selected despite being unfit and was sent home before the tournament began. That is not even mentioning that their aggressive opening batsman is missing this tournament due to allegations of corruption and one of their first-choice seam bowlers is banned for failing to report an approach.
What is different for India since the last global tournament? They have changed captains, but their former World Cup and World T20-winning leader is still around. In the in-form Jasprit Bumrah, they have uncovered a world-class limited-overs bowler. In Kedar Jadhav and Hardik Pandya, they have two big-hitting allrounders (that said, what's with leaving Krunal Pandya - arguably better than both of these - at home?). The only real change for India was that their totals of 300 were getting easier for other teams to chase.
Coming into the Champions Trophy, since the last World Cup India had played 21 ODIs against teams that qualified for this tournament, of which they'd won only nine. Better than Pakistan's poor record, but not by that much.
Once here, Pakistan were humiliated and then rebuilt to scrap their way through until they annihilated Slogland in the semi-final. India have just knocked the ball around a bit, had one blip when they couldn't beat Sri Lanka, but since then have been warming up with what looked like practice matches for their final.
And of all the easy games they have had this tournament, the one against Pakistan was the easiest.
But this is not the same Pakistan that had only one decent series win since the last World Cup. It's not even the same team that India beat in first game of the tournament. There have been only a few personnel changes, but small changes have made a huge difference.
The first featured Wahab Riaz, who for some reason - perhaps the folks at the PCB didn't have access to Statsguru or their own memory banks - started in the XI for this tournament. Against India he went to No. 2 on the all-time list for bowlers who have conceded over 80 runs in a match. As for claims that he is a strike bowler... if you take a wicket every 48 balls, as Wahab has since the last World Cup, you're not a strike bowler; you're just a bowler. Junaid Khan came in in his place.
Junaid has not played much recently, and when he has, he has not been great. His overall record is not particularly great either. But he does take a wicket every 35-odd balls, and has good county-cricket experience. He did bowl better than Wahab in a practice match, but he was still a risk. The risk paid off against Sri Lanka. He took 1 for 28 from his first five overs, which wasn't that spectacular. But then, when he was back in the 31st over, Sri Lanka were 160 for 3, with captain Angelo Mathews nearing 40 and Niroshan Dickwella into the 70s. Junaid beat Dickwella's bat three times, and the over cost one run. Next over Mathews played a shocking shot off Amir and was out. The following over Junaid had Dhananjaya de Silva. Sri Lanka's innings never recovered. Wahab brought Pakistan more huff and puff; Junaid brought them control and wickets.
Then there was the change of mentality and fielding positions. When Ahmed Shehzad was dropped, it meant that Pakistan had to change their point fielder. A few different players have rotated through that position since, but the best one has been Shadab Khan. He is clearly the most athletically gifted Pakistan fielder since, wait, let me think... umm, no, well, maybe ever. He moves like fielders from good fielding teams move; he's young, quick and hungry. He still fumbles sometimes, but half the battle is making the batsmen doubt that there is a single there and he certainly does that. Against England, it was the sort of pitch where you wanted to use soft hands and steal singles, and Pakistan made that tough. It wasn't just Shadab; the whole team was switched on. And most importantly, Sarfraz wasn't letting the game meander; since the South Africa game, he had regularly kept one extra fielder in the ring, or sometimes two extra fielders in. This is a Pakistan team building pressure not through magic balls and swagger but through hustle and strategy.
And then finally the biggest change came at the top of their innings. In the first game, they sent out Shehzad and Azhar Ali, two players who don't make a lot of runs and take a long time to not make those runs. It was a horrible combination, made all the more terrible by the man they left out. Fakhar Zaman has been killing it in domestic List-A cricket for years, he averages 50, with a strike rate of 95. Fifty. Ninety-five. And he wasn't in this team? This team?
His second ball against in international cricket was a boundary off Wayne Parnell. He went on to make 31 from 23. In the third over against Sri Lanka, he hit Lasith Malinga for three boundaries. Against England he kept coming at the bowlers all innings, despite the pitch not being conducive, and his 57 from 58 finished the game.
Almost everything has gone right for Pakistan since losing to India. Their spinners took wickets against South Africa and the rain then ended their chase but not before points were secured. Allrounder Faheem Ashraf was picked against Sri Lanka and took two wickets, and then Sri Lanka's fielding fell apart just when Pakistan looked most likely to go out of the tournament. When Amir's back injury surfaced in the semi, Rumman Raees bowled very well in his first ODI and they also got the advantage of playing on the same pitch twice in three days.
The only thing that has gone wrong for them is that Bangladesh lost to India.
India never seemed to leave fourth gear for most of the 2015 World Cup; they won all their group games, and when they batted first they made over 300 every time, including in their quarter-final win against Bangladesh. Their theory was pretty sound. They were one of the first teams that knew they could score over 300 pretty regularly. But, unlike the other teams that could do so, they seemed to decide that if they didn't go after 370 or 350 or whatever they perceived to be their maximum in those conditions, it meant that they would more often than not get to 300 or 320 in those games. And then scoreboard pressure would win them more of those games than they lost. In the semi-final, it was Australia defending with a more potent bowling attack that caused them to come unstuck.
India have the batsmen to score over 400, but they don't seem to have the game plan for that.
As the overall run rates of teams have risen, teams no longer fear targets of 300. The idea that 300 is par in ODI cricket is ludicrous - since the last World Cup the only team scoring that much per first innings is England. But teams do chase 300 more now than ever before, and India have been on the wrong end of that a few times. Of India's last four losses when batting first, three of them have been when they have scored over 300, the other one was defending 295. In this same period, they have also lost two games when chasing over 300, both times making over 300 in the chase but still falling short of the target. So that is one way you could beat them: restrict them as best you can even as they play it a bit safe, and then have your batsmen put on a near faultless display of batting as Sri Lanka did in this tournament.
The problem for Pakistan is that this is not what Pakistan do. Since 2015 against the teams in this tournament they have only chased one score over 300, and they have won with only one first-innings score over 300. Totals of 300 are just not their thing. Heading into this final, Pakistan have two players of the 20 who have scored over 100 runs this tournament, India have two of the two who have scored over 300. It's not that Pakistan's batting has been spontaneously combusting, it's just that they don't make many big scores; they make medium totals, or they chase small or medium totals.
When they win, more often than not it has been by bowling the opposition out. Against India that isn't so easy.
Pakistan are the best bowling side in the middle overs, India are the best batting side in the middle overs.
India have many strengths; you could easily look at their bowling, which is probably close to as strong as any attack over the years. Bumrah is top-quality from the beginning until the end. He, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jadhav are all going at less than five runs an over. Only Bhuvneshwar has taken more than four wickets, but India's bowlers have still accounted for 23 wickets so far this tournament, bowling teams out twice.
India's next strength is their batting at the death. In this tournament they score at 11.93 runs per over, practically two runs a ball, and score a boundary every 3.3 balls from overs 41 onwards. Against Pakistan they made 72 off their final four overs. But the reason they score at this rate in the end overs is because of what happens from overs 11-40. That is the real key to how this team has won matches.
For India, you could club the opening overs with their boring middle phase. India don't have a Brendon McCullum, or even a Luke Ronchi. They certainly don't have a David Warner type. Over the last five years, no India batsman scores at more than a run a ball in the first ten overs, in fact, they don't have a player who scores at more than 90 in that part of the game. They hardly have a player who scores quicker than Ian Bell. Ian Bell, who was largely let go because he scored too slowly. It seems the Indian openers' main job over the last two years (and beyond - since 2012 they have the 11th highest run rate for the first ten overs) is to not lose wickets, and be somewhere between 45 to 50 runs.
What does that mean for this tournament? Well this plan has come off better than usual; they have lost one wicket from their first ten overs across the four games they have played. Then they bat in the middle overs, and, well, that has been pretty extraordinary.
They average 96 runs per wicket in the middle overs, while scoring at 5.90, hitting a boundary every nine balls. Let all that sink in. They score quicker, don't lose many wickets, find it pretty easy to hit boundaries, and have set batsmen coming into the death. And by "don't lose many wickets", let's be specific: they have lost seven across their four games. So if you add their one from the first ten overs to the 11-40 section, in 160 overs of cricket in this tournament they have lost eight wickets. That is how you become the team that has a highest score of 381 but a lowest of only 200, the second-lowest differential in ODI cricket since the 2015 World Cup - only Bangladesh have a lower differential, but their top score of 329 in this period is also by far the lowest among the eight teams in this tournament. They almost always make runs, because they hardly ever lose wickets.
Against Pakistan earlier in this tournament, they were 213 for 2 at the end of the 40th over in a rain-reduced 48-over innings. They ended on 319, having made those aforementioned 72 from their final four overs.
In that game, Hasan Ali was still human; he bowled well in the middle overs of that match, hit a good length, made the India batsmen respect him as his six overs for 21 runs in the first 40 suggest. But his final four overs went for 49 runs, largely because he didn't take middle-over wickets. Since then he has been a middle-over maniac. And Pakistan have followed his lead; in the three games since India, they have taken 16 wickets in this period of the game at an average of 21 while only allowing 3.93 runs an over. Two of the three teams to play them have been bowled out, the other was eight down - these three included the No. 1-ranked side, the pre-tournament favourite, and the only team to beat India so far.
Pakistan have only three wickets in the first ten overs of their matches this tournament. The middle overs have been the period where Imad Wasim, Mohammad Hafeez, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Amir, Faheem Asfraf, Junaid Khan and the middle-over GOAT Hasan Ali have built dot-ball pressure and waited for one wicket, and then built that into two or three.
Last game, going against all the experts' opinions and even their own record (which suggested they weren't better bowling first) they chose to send England in. Their last three wins have come bowling first. So, if Pakistan win the toss in the final, the chances are India will be batting first, and by the 40th over of the match, we will most likely know the what the result will be. The battle of the middle overs is what will probably win it.
To win Pakistan will have to keep riding on the wave they've somehow found the last few games, pretend India aren't India and then bowl them out or at least go very close. To win India just need to keep playing how they have been doing and handle the pressure of being red-hot favourites in a final.
Over the last few years, and even in this tournament, the two sides have been the shambolic scrapper and the calm scorer. We know what India will probably do. Even though we know how Pakistan have been winning, as always, we have no idea what they will do. Hopefully they do.