Can Pakistan do it again?

Neighbours India and Pakistan will feature in the ICC Under-19 World Cricket Cup final today (Sunday) in a day/night match at the R. Premadasa Stadium, Khettarama.

An India-Pakistan match in any capacity generates tremendous interest to those who are closer to the game of cricket and this too, although played at junior level is bound to create lot of interest.

Pakistan are the title holders when they won it in 2004 in Bangladesh defeating the West Indies. India won it in year 2000 when it was held for the first time in Sri Lanka beating the hosts.

India started off well defeating Australia in a warm up game and maintained their unblemish record in the tournament defeating host Sri Lanka, Namibia, and Scotland in their pre-quarter final matches and defeated the West Indies in the quarter-finals and beat England convincingly in the semi-final.

Pakistan on the other hand did not have the ideal start losing to Bangladesh in a pre-quarter final match, but came back strongly beating Zimbabwe in a quarter final game and then beating Australia in the second semi final. So the stage is set for the grand finale between the two cricketing giants in the sub-continent.

Pakistan were unable to display their true batting ability as they had to chase moderate totals in their league matches. Their batting strength was seen in the semi-final match against Australia.

In both sides batting seem to be their forte. Ravikant Shukla and Dhiman have been scoring for India while Ali Ashad and Riaz Kail have been among the runs for the Pakistanis.

Pakistan: Sarfaraz Ahmed (captain), Usman Malik, Ali Khan, Muhammed Fahim, Syed Wasim, Jamshaid Ahmed, Ali Asad, Riaz Kail, Akthar Ayub, Laiq Muhammed, Anwer Ali Khan, Nasir Jamshaid, Rameez Raja, Ibrahim Muhammed.

India (from): Ravikant Shukla (Captain), Abu Nechim Ahmed, Piyush Chawla, Gaurav Dhiman, Shahbaz Nadeem, Cheteshwar Pujara, Saurabh Bandekar, Debabrata Das, Ravindra Singh Jadeja, Mohnish Parmar, Pinal Shah, Rohit Sharma, Mayank Tehlan, Vijaykumar Yomahesh.

Umpires: Steve Davis (Australia) and Billy Doctrove (West Indies). Third Umpire: Asoka de Silva (Sri Lanka). Match referee: Roshan Mahanama (Sri Lanka).
