'THE GAME' has finally arrived!

The most talked about game is here. Before the start of the World Cup, the question doing the rounds was whether India and Pakistan will get a chance to have a go at each other since these two teams were in differnt groups. As things stand, they do and that too in the semi-finals. Once India beat Australia at Motera, every other match that was going to be played was forgotten. The talk is now dominated by only and only of the big tussle between the arch-rivals.

The hype surrounding the game has been enormous. Every news channel is coming up with the most minute detail of the games played between these two great cricketing nations, more so of the World Cup’s. This is what the game between these two countries does. Javed Miandad reacting angrily to Kiran More’s appeal for a caught behind in the 1992 World Cup or his last ball six to Chetan Sharma, dismissal of Aamir Sohail in the 1996 World Cup, Sachin Tendulkar smashing a six over third man to Shoaib Akhtar and Virender Sehwag following suit against Waqar Younis in the 2003 World Cup, all of these providing a platform for the super built up for Wednesday’s game.

Looking at the game through the eyes of the two captains’, one can immediately feel the difference. Shahid Afridi is someone who is not scared to show his emotions on the field. Reacting angrily to a bad delivery bowled or a misfield or setting the field with vibrant hand moments. It’s all a part of his captaincy, aggressiveness written all over it. M S Dhoni on the other hand has a calm aura about him. He hardly seems ruffled by the things that go around him always looking to control what he can. If the bowler bowls a bad delivery, leave the bowler alone or give him a few words of encouragement. That’s the attitude he has carried along with him since he took over the captaincy. So we have two captains with exactly opposite behavior in the handling of the teams but with the same desire-to win the match for your country.

Shahid Afridi and his team came into the tournament as mercurial outsiders, while India was the favorite. But as the tournament has gone along, this has reversed! India struggled in the group stages but dazzled against Australia in the quarter-finals. On the flip side, Pakistan came into the tournament with all sorts of controversies with spot fixing doing the rounds and 3 quality players in the form of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir banned. Moreover it was not sure who will be leading the side, whether it would be Afridi or Misbah Ul Haq with the selectors having named the 15 for the World Cup but without a captain. But this Pakistani team has made sure that things of the past should stay in the past, living and playing every moment of the World Cup as if their life depended on it and here they are now, in the semi-finals of the World Cup. The captain himself is leading from the front with 21 wickets in the tournament so far.

The more one looks at these two sides the more one feels that it will be a battle of India’s batting against Pakistan’s bowling. India’s batting is looking in great touch with the top 6 having had a decent outing in the matches so far. Virender Sehwag & Sachin Tendulkar at their murderous best, Gautam Gambhir has looked solid at Number 3, and then followed by the elegant Yuvraj Singh and Virat Kohli. Pakistan’s bowling looks to be back to good old days with Umar Gul coming into his own and the spinners in the form of Afridi, Ajmal and Haffez having fired in every matched they have played. It’s the bowling that worries India with only Zaheer Khan looking at his best, and the batting that worries Pakistan with only Misbah having shown some form with the bat.

India has always had the better off Pakistan in the World Cup’s and that is some statistic that Team India would want to keep intact. Pakistan on the other hand would like to remind India that they have never gone past a semi-final of a World Cup when played in the sub-continent having lost to England in 1987 and to Sri Lanka in 1996. But then it’s a new day and a new match all together. The world will be watching and the team that is able to keep its nerves better will win the match. Promises to be yet another cracking encounter. And at the end of it all, one thing is for sure. On one side of the border there will be absolute ecstasy, on the other, utter agony!