Live Report - India vs Pakistan, World Cup 2023, Ahmedabad

After whacking Hasan Ali for four and bringing the target down to just six runs, KL Rahul plays the over out and hands the strike back to Shreyas Iyer because Shreyas Iyer is on 48 not out. And he gets there with a down-the-track thump over Mohammad Nawaz's head. India beat Pakistan. They're 8-0 now in World Cups.

Fireworks go off in Ahmedabad. The crowd is singing verses from Ma Tujhe Salaam.

Kuldeep Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah were sublime earlier in the day, the key architects triggering a Pakistan collapose of 8 for 36. From 155 for 2, they were bowled out for 191. Then Rohit Sharma walked out and picked up where he left off against Afghanistan. India's captain has made 217 runs in 147 balls over his last two trips to the crease.

"Jeetega bhai, Jeetega" chants are up with India only 38 runs away

Rohit needs 15 for another World Cup century. He is already the record holder. Ane he's only played 20 innings in this tournament. Sachin, Sanga, Ponting, they've all played twice as many. And they're all behind him.

Won't happen here. Shaheen Afridi comes back and takes out the India captain for 86. Rohit walks off with his head thrown back. Very reminiscent of how Rahul sank to his knees against Australia when on 91, he hit a six and won the game, but he was trying to hit a four and prolong the game so he could get a century.

Meanwhile, Shreyas Iyer is having an important hit out there. He fell for a duck against Australia, got some decent runs against Afghanistan and getting into more rhythm here.

On the back of a 63-ball hundred against Afghanistan, Rohit Sharma has raised a 36-ball fifty against Pakistan

The stadium is calling out his name. Just a little while earlier, he was fooling around with one of the umpires, showing off his biceps to them. If we know anything about Rohit at all, it was in response to them asking "how are you hitting them so far?"

India are being ruthless.

Afridi in the first over

Hasan Ali in the 2nd over

Afridi in the 3rd over

Hasan Ali in the 4th over

Afridi in the 5th over

Hasan Ali in the 6th over

Afridi in the 7th over

Mohammad Nawaz in the 8th over

Haris Rauf in the ninth over

But they do lose Virat Kohli in the 10th over to Hasan Ali. He tries to keep the attack going and mis-hits a pull to mid-on. Kohli doesn't play low-percentage shots like that but the fact that he has done here shows that he thinks India are comfortable and he has fully bought into India being this aggressive in the first powerplay

And they're showing no sign of stopping. Haris Rauf, Pakistan's resident speed demon, has been boshed straight down the ground for six by Rohit Sharma with the Motera crowd baying for more.

The sounds off the bat is solid once more, but that doesn't matter. Gill sees width outside off and wants to cash in. There's no one deep at point. All he has to do is lift it over the infield.

But he can't do it. For all the timing, he can't beat Shadab Khan. What an amazing athlete. Makes a tough catch look almost matter-of-fact. India 23 for 1 in three overs.

The first time he faced Pakistan, he had an almighty struggle. India had lost both their big boys, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, within six overs. So maybe that's why he was being extra cautious. But a score of 10 off 32 never fit the Shubman Gill bill.

He fixed that first impression at the very next opportunity, scoring 58 off 52 balls, and here at the World Cup, having only just recovered from an illness, he smashes the first ball he faces from Shaheen Afridi to the extra cover boundary.

Gill: Nine balls faced, four fours hit!

They were 155 for 2 with Babar Azam on fifty and Mohammad Rizwan nearing fifty.

There was genius in this - Jasprit Bumrah picked up two wickets in two overs with the old ball on a pitch that has offered no real help to the bowlers barring a bit of low bounce.

Kuldeep Yadav reprised his gift for posing uncomfortable questions to the batters with his wristspin. The added pace he's found along with the accuracy that he's not lost has made him so hard to deal with.

With the score 155 for 2 in the 30th over, and Babar and Rizwan set at the crease, ESPNcricinfo's forecaster, which has only today been upgraded to include ODIs, had Pakistan reaching 286 at the end of 50 overs.

Kuldeep Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah have ripped up those calculations.

Pakistan's projected score at 35.3 is just 212

This is why India were so cautious with Bumrah as he recovered from his back injury. They could not afford to lose him by rushing him.

On the back of turning the game over the last few overs, Rohit has decided to go for the kill.

Rizwan is the key batter here and if Bumrah can take him out, that's a major win. Great captaincy from Rohit. He's been switched on all day.

He always gave the new batters a slip. Even with the innings in the 30th overs.

AND BUMRAH'S GONE THROUGH RIZWAN! Offcutter! And it moves so far into the right-hander. Proper seed! He's done this before. His slower balls are just as scary as his quick ones. Shaun Marsh will remember that.

There is abosolutely no change in the arm speed. That's what does batters. The run up is the same. The gather is the same. The hyper-extension of the elbow is the same. The snap of the wrist...

That's where the genius lies. For the seam-up balls, he snaps it straight down. For this variation, he snaps it sideways.

So what happens is, through the air, the ball is really really quick. But then when it hits the pitch, because of the revs imparted, it grips and it slows down and that slowing down is so disorienting.

Rizwan was into the shot so early and he was so utterly beaten because at first, the ball looked like it was pace on, then it pitched and became something entirely different. THIS. IS. GENIUS!

With a little help from DRS.

The lbw looked plumb actually and the fact that the umpire didn't give it out on field may itself have led to doubts among the Indians' minds as they got together to discuss the review.

Think Marais Erasmus thought Saud Shakeel got some bat on it.

Rohit Sharma went with his gut - he didn't get info one way or the other - and went for the DRS and out came three reds.

This is the kind of wicket a quick wristspinner always gets. A new batter, unsure of which way the ball is turning - the ball wasn't actually turning here, there's really not a lot of help from this pitch. But Shakeel went back to a good length ball and it skids through to rap him on the pads.

Rohit punches the air, as if he'd taken the wicket himself, which in some ways he has. It wouldn't have been out if he hadn't gone upstairs.

Three wickets for just 11 runs in 21 balls between the 30th and the 33rd overs from India.

This is why Kuldeep is in the team. This Kuldeep. The quicker through the air Kuldeep. He is the second-highest wicket-taker (36) in the middle-overs since the last World Cup. And that was coming into the game. He's already added two more to that tally.

But he doesn't add any more to the total. He's played a poor shot and gotten out to the most expensive bowler on show today.

Almost as if to compensate for that day in the Asia Cup, when he picked up four wickets in one single over, Mohammed Siraj has been taking a lot of top in this World Cup. But suddenly, against the run of play, he's broken a very crucial partnership.

Babar was looking to almost late cut a ball that wasn't short, that was very stump-to-stump, on a pitch that has em skid through low. It's a lot of risk to take for at best a single.

You play those balls with the full face. Not the angled face. And to make matters worse, Siraj had gone cross-seam. And when the seam hit the pitch and came up, it came up angled into the right-hander, so it moved into Babar. That little bit of movement was the final nail.

He almost had Babar Azam out lbw too.

In almost a tribute to the kind of control the left-arm spinner had over proceedings, one of the most gifted batters in front of the wicket, decided to look for runs behind the wicket.

Kuldeep saw Babar going for the sweep, flattened his trajectory, quickened his pace and had the Pakistan captain in a tangle.

The on-field decision from Marais Erasmus was not-out. India went for DRS. Hit in line. Impact in line. But wickets was umpires call, and only by the smallest margin. Babar went "ooooooh" as he saw the replay on the big screen. He knew he'd got lucky.

Babar offers a chance in the next over - the 28th - as well, a flick with short midwicket in place, almost ends up in Hardik's hands.

Mohammad Rizwan's average against left-arm spin is above 100.

Ravindra Jadeja isn't your average left-arm spinner. Not least on his own home ground.

This battle has been absolutely first-class.

Rizwan's looking for every opportunity to sweep, but Jadeja is flat and quick and straight and he makes sure that shot is always a risk.

Without that release, Rizwan was 9 off 18. He was actively trying to dictate terms and was finding it hard. Meanwhile, at the other end, Babar was playing simple shots and piercing the infield beautifully.

But a player like Rizwan is hard to bog down. He runs hard between the wickets. And almost every time he connects with the ball, it looks like he imparts all the power he has into the shots. Shreyas Iyer who is very quick across the turf couldn't stop one of his flicks through midwicket. Kuldeep Yadav similarly came in second best as a Rizwan cut shot to a ball that wasn't even giving him all that much room found the boundary.

Pakistan's dynamo at No. 4 hit three fours in four balls of spin that he faced between the 22nd and the 23d over and this partnership has reached fifty.

A few years ago, when Babar Azam was with the Pakistan team in South Africa, he went toe-to-toe against one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of the game and he dominated him.

Dale Steyn doesn't get driven on the up. And if he does, he just keeps running in and bowls even quicker and proves the shot was an anomaly.

These numbers are in Test cricket, btw: Babar vs Steyn: 110 runs in 109 balls, with 24 fours and just one dismissal

The reason behind all that is the smoothness of the weight transfer. Babar doesn't move his feet as massively as say Virat Kohli does when he goes on the cover drive. He likes playing the ball under his eyes more than he likes going chasing after it. That's the major difference between two great batters and both of em have dominated this ODI format.

The Pakistan captain is 30 off 33 after 20 overs.

Shashank Kishore from the ground: Rohit’s been alert, maybe even just a little more keyed up than he usually is. Beneath the dark shades, there can be an air of the casual and the calm that may always fool one into believe there’s a hint of the lazy. That, however, is just a misconception.

Midway through his 11th over, Rohit scanned his field and waved towards Kuldeep. Amid a sea of blue in the backdrop, it’s possible Kuldeep missed the cue. He let it be. Two balls later, as Babar pulled Hardik for back-to-back boundaries, Rohit was wildly waving to get Kuldeep’s attention, as if to say ‘here, come on now.’ Kuldeep made a quick dash towards the umpire, and Rohit walked off with a grimace, without saying a word to Hardik.

That said, he hasn’t been overly besides his bowlers every ball. He’s largely let them be as they’ve settled down post Abdullah Shafique’s wicket. Until then, though, he seemed just a tad anxious after every boundary was hit.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

We're not sure how many people are there in Ahmedabad right now. But all of them were screaming for five whole minutes as they thought India had got rid of Mohammad Rizwan.

All through the course of the DRS, they were screaming"

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

It's a terribly risky option to sweep Ravindra Jadeja. He always bowls stump to stump. He skids his balls through. He's very quick through the air. He's set up to get bowleds and lbws.

Rizwan is a terrific sweeper of the ball. He'd been practicing his sweeps all day yesterday in training. First man in, last man out.

He went for the sweep, got beaten for pace, rapped on the pads, given on field and Ahmedabad erupted in a roar. They kept roaring as DRS revealed "no bat involved"

But as soon as ball-tracking came on and it was shown to be missing leg stump....

"YYYAAAAAAA... OOOOOOOHHHH..."

It's not hostile. He just jogs past him, keeps eye contact, and then adds a little wave bye-bye.

India were under pressure. Hardik had just given up the 12th boundary in the 13 overs.

Nothing was happening off the pitch. The crowd was quiet. Too many balls were hitting the middle of the bat.

All of a sudden, this one, pitched up and angled across the left-hander, draws him into a drive and gets a nick through to the keeper

Part of the reason for this wicket is that short-ball barrage that India have been indulging in. Imam knows its coming for him. So he's waiting on the back foot. He wasn't quick enough to tranfer the weight forward into that shot. He was on the move and when you're on the move, you rarely time it the way you like.

Our editor in chief Sambit Bal is at the ground: I went out to from the press box to watch the national anthems being played from the open stands. It was a stirring sight. The Indian and Pakistani flags side by side, the sonorous melody of the anthems themselves, the quiet deference to the Pakistani anthem, and the enthusiastic singing-along for the Indian one, followed the loudest cheers of the day.

Minutes later, as the Pakistan openers started crunching boundaries off the new ball, it felt like stadium had emptied out: you could hear nothing but the rustle of people fanning themselves with the cardboard handouts meant for celebratory waving. The crowd didn’t find it’s voice till a stump was hit a throw from the infield. But it wasn’t until Mohammad Siraj pinned Abduallah Shafique with a skiddy one, that the ground went full decibel: they first joined Siraj in the appeal, and then erupted when the umpire agreed.

The ground is quite a sight. It’s nearly full, as expected, and all blue. Apart from the players and the support staff, there are 11 Pakistanis in the stadium to my knowledge, and all of them in the media and commentary boxes.

According to ESPNcriicnfo's logs, India bowled only one proper short ball in the first seven overs.

Since then, seeing the Ahmedabad pitch is very flat, and the outfield is very quick, they're trying to use this length to be aggressive.

They can, because there is pace in the pitch, and if they bend their backs, those short balls can fly up at the batter's nose.

Both Babar and Imam are being tested, but they're proving to be up to it. Babar's just smacked two Hardik short balls for four in the 11th over

A recurring criticism of India's performances in big matches is that, sometimes, they fail to pick up cues quickly.

In the World Test Championship final, they waited till Travis Head was well past a century to try bouncing him. A similar script was starting to develop with Imam-ul-Haq, who is also suspect from that length. But eventually Jasprit Bumrah went for one in his fourth over - the seventh of the innings.

The wicket that India took, just seconds before it, Rohit Sharma walked up to Mohammed Siraj and said something. Maybe he said bowl cross-seam. Hit the pitch. Try and get variable bounce. Maybe he didn't. But the fact is, India's captain wasn't about to let the game drift. He went up to his bowler to try and exert control over proceedings.

Siraj went cross-seam. The ball skidded through low and Abdullah Shafique, who had hit Bumrah for an on-the-up four over mid-on which could rank as one of the shots of the tournament, was lbw.

India aren't in the mood to miss cues today.

The 18 hundreds they've made in that time are second only to India's 19, whose top three averages 48.23 as well.

The first ball swung away from the angle into the right-hander from Jasprit Bumrah. When he went searching for it again off the last ball of the over, it wasn't there.

Mohammed Siraj who is a specialist swing bowler also puts it up there looking for movement. Nothing doing.

All of Pakistan's runs have come in boundaries. India will be adjusting their lengths soon. The quicks will be pulling it back to the 6m mark instead of the 4m mark and hope to get some movement off the seam.

Yep, Bumrah's made the adjustment.

A couple of their allrounders have gone up against Bumrah - Shadab Khan and Mohammad Nawaz. Hasan Ali also knows what its line to face India's premier fast bowler, but he wouldn't even have been in this XI if Naseem Shah had been fit.

And together all these five men have made 56 runs off 80 balls for two dismissals.

"This is something we look for and dream for," says Rohit Sharma about India vs Pakistan as a crowd that is always building makes itself heard. He also makes a note of how dew is setting in in the evenings.

India: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 KL Rahul (wk), 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Shardul Thakur, 9 Jasprit Bumrah, 10 Kuldeep Yadav, 11 Mohammed Siraj

Babar Azam walks up and it almost sounded like he was being booed? The noise shifted noticeably from the massive "yay" for Shubman Gill being fit again and playing this game to something entirely different as the Pakistan captain went up to speak at the toss.

Pakistan: 1 Abdullah Shafique, 2 Imam-ul-Haq, 3 Babar Azam (capt), 4 Mohammad Rizwan (wk), 5 Saud Shakeel, 6 Ifthikhar Ahmed, 7 Shadab Khan, 8 Mohammad Nawaz, 9 Shaheen Afridi, 10 Hasan Ali, 11 Haris Rauf

The India vs Pakistan World Cup game will be broadcast in the USA on ESPN+. Do tune in.

Live ball-by-ball commentary of the India vs Pakistan game is also available in Hindi and in Tamil.

Over the last five years, Shaheen Shah Afridi has picked up a wicket in the first over of an ODI seven times in 29 tries. Among Full Member nations, only Mitchell Starc (11) has been been deadlier

Rohit Sharma (884 runs at an average of 69.74 and strike rate of 99.52) and Shubman Gill (796 runs at an average of 122.66 and a strike rate of 94.96) have been among the top three batters in the first 10 overs of an ODI since the last World Cup.

Once more, since the last World Cup, Kuldeep Yadav's tally 36 wickets between overs 11 and 40 are the second best among the teams participating here. But he'll be up against the batter who has scored more runs than anybody in this phase of play - Babar Azam (1486 at an average of 87.41 and a strike rate of 91.44)

And then there's Mohammad Rizwan, who has become a world-beating batter without anybody really noticing. Except, Osman Samiuddin did and that story is more than worth your time.

It's basically best vs best today in all departments.

Shashank Kishore from the ground: There’s a musical festival on in the middle, but it isn’t still quite as exciting as walking first up to get a glimpse of the pitch for head coach Rahul Dravid. Has a long, long examination of the surface, shadow bats for a bit and then sees Mickey Arthur walk up to him from the corner of his eye. They greet each other, chat and disperse as Dravid joins the Indian team as they set shop on the side net.

Motera’s just around 50% full. Massive, massive queues of people waiting to get in. The main intersection and the roads leading to the stadium were shut for 30 minutes to create a green channel for the players and officials.

Both teams have won both their opening games at this tournament. Their batting is functioning better than expected – largely because their middle-orders have begun pulling their weight.

India – Rohit’s India – function off a method. He has reminded his squad that he will be picking a horses for courses XI and that they shouldn’t take it personally if they’re left out. He has led by example in asking his batters to be more aggressive in white-ball cricket. He gets irritated when the monkey on his back is brought to his attention – as if he doesn’t know its there. India haven’t won a world championship since 2017. His answer to those questions typically involve how – even if they’re not gone all the way – they’ve been one of the very few sides who have invariably made it to the semi-final legs of those tournaments. He’s asking an impatient fan base to have the one thing with which they always struggle. Faith.

Pakistan have brought structure to their game too. Very recently they secured a landmark player contract deal. This year they’ve also committed to a style of play that they’ve called – rather unimaginatively considering just how much they win at social media – “the Pakistan way”. Two of their best innings on this tour came off the bats of who most of the world thought was Test match specialists. At a time when their superstar, Babar Azam, is going through a tiiiiiiny little lull, the others are stepping up. And then there’s their bowling. No metric on earth can match up to the feeling they produce. Dread in the minds of the opponents. Joy in the hearts of their faithful. An extra dose of that intangible, inexplicable magic will be needed today to compensate for the loss of one of their number – Naseem Shah - on one of the flattest pitches on earth.

This was the Pakistan team arriving in India for the start of the World Cup. Volume up, please.

They won the first two games playing in front of fans who were serenading them. That won’t be the case today. It’s a pity.

India have welcomed the Pakistan players with open arms. I’m probably being naïve in saying so but I wish they’d done the same with the fans. Because as Sidharth Monga says here in this brilliantly evocative piece, they add so much to the occasion.