India V Pakistan 2011 Cricket World Cup: Live Stream and Match Preview

Start time: 09.00

Watch India v Pakistan: Live Streaming

Venue: Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Chandigarh

Team News

India: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Ashish Nehra, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel.

Yusuf Pathan is likely to get the nod ahead of Ravichandran Ashwin because Pathan’s potential to hit a big score in the middle-to-lower will be key on a batsman’s paradise.

Pakistan: Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Hafeez, Asad Shafiq, Younis Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq, Umar Akmal, Abdul Razzaq, Shahid Afridi, Umar Gul, Wahab Riaz, Saeed Ajmal.

Expect the same XI that destroyed the West Indies.

Prediction

India will expect a big score from any of Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir, Singh, Dhoni or Kohli. Even Pathan can be expected to deliver an innings reminiscent of his match-winning 123 off 96 balls against New Zealand in December.

India hold the mental edge heading into their fifth World Cup match against their sub-continent neighbours, having won all four previous clashes.

But Pakistan have beaten India the two times these countries met on this ground in the ODI format – in 1999 and 2007 – with the most recent fixture seeing Pakistan chase down India’s total of 321 to win with one ball to spare.

Pakistan’s bowlers have a mammoth task before them, but Gul, Riaz, Razzaq and Afridi have the potential to restrict the power hitting in the Indian top-order.

Plenty of runs, plenty of noise, plenty of drama. India to march on.

Key Men

Virender Sehwag – A proven big-stage performer, Sehwag can not only score runs but belt the cover off the ball to make batting easier for the stars to come in behind him. Sehwag averages 40-plus in World Cup matches with a strike rate of 104.95 – an ominous statistic for the Pakistan strike bowlers.

Shahid Afridi - Batsman, bowler, captain, talisman. There is very little that Afridi does not do in the Pakistan shirt and his team will be depending on him to produce the goods once more. He has taken 21 wickets (@10.71) and will need to add to this tally to restrict a strong Indian batting line-up.

India v Pakistan semifinal ICC World Cup 2011: Indian batsmen v Pakistani bowlers

All eyes are glued to the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 when Pakistan lock horns with India in the second semi-final on 30 March, 2011 in a sold-out Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mohali. The PM-Gilani-meets-PM-Manmohan-peace-talks aside, fans expect a heated encounter; an emotional rollercoaster of sorts, with tempers soaring on both sides of the divide.

Pakistan's supremacy over India in head-to-head encounters is there for everyone to see. In 119 One Day Internationals, Pakistan clearly holds the edge with 69 wins with 46 loses; with only four matches ending without a result.

However, as they say, cricket is by chance. In World Cup cricket, the estranged neighbours met four times where Pakistan - against all odds - failed to win even once; faltering in 1992, 1996, 1999 and the latest in 2003.

However, history would mean little in Mohali where the team that soaks under pressure would eventually bow out of the tournament. 

A thorough dissection of both teams would reveal that the game would be decided, or defined, by either India's batting might or by Pakistan's bowling aggression.

The Indians have a slight advantage in the batting department as most of their top order batsmen have been amongst the runs. Yuvraj Singh holds the key for India as his track record against Pakistan has been brilliant to say the least. Singh has also been dubbed by experts as the strongest candidate for the Player of the Tournament Award – the notion propelled by the fact that Yuvraj has already won four Player of the Match Awards in this mega event.

Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar would love to make his 100th century in international cricket against Pakistan as he will not find a bigger stage to do so. He, along with Virender Sehwag, can turn the match in India’s favour and they would have to deliver the goods if India is to counter the strong bowling attack that Pakistan possesses.

On the flipside, Pakistan misses the same class as the Indians do in batting, but the Cornered Tigers of 1992 have developed a potent combination in the preceding months. Pakistan have some genuine match winners in their ranks – Umar Akmal and Shoaib Akhtar to name a few - who can take the game away from India.

However, it would be foolish to expect the youngsters to win it for Pakistan as they might fold under strenuous pressure. Senior statesmen Younis Khan, Mishab-Ul-Haq, Shahid Afridi and Abdul Razzaq have to raise their game against India if Pakistan stands any chance of clinching the trophy in Mumbai.

If India holds the edge in batting, Pakistan’s bowling reigns supreme against MS Dhoni and Co. The Men in Green proved their mettle against Australia and the West Indies; signifying that Pakistan has one of the fiercest bowling attacks in the world. As Muhammad Hafeez claimed, it's the 'strongest bowling attack in the world'. Umar Gul and Shahid Afridi are in wicket-taking form which comes as a positive sign for Pakistan.

India's bowling on the other hand remains mediocre; evident by their lack of penetration during their recent group matches in the World Cup. However, the induction of off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin seems to have given them a boost as he has variety under his belt which can come in handy.

This is a mouth-watering fixture for those lucky enough to scrape the highly-prized ticket for the house-full event in Mohali, with people paying 10-times the amount to get hold of a seat. The 28,000 capacity crowd will be coupled by more than a billion people in television audiences from all around the world. So will the match live up to its expectation? Only time will tell.

India v Pakistan, 2nd semi-final, World Cup 2011, Mohali Misbah not worried by batting numbers

Misbah-ul-Haq is not impressed by statistics and he doesn't care about history either. That helps, particularly with an India-Pakistan match due to break out at the World Cup within three days.

One of the anchors of Pakistan's batting and the man with the team's top score in the World Cup so far - 83 not out against Sri Lanka - Misbah said numbers could be meaningless if they did not agree with the results column. Pakistan's certainly don't.

Umar Akmal is their heaviest run-scorer in this World Cup, but he is placed as low as 28th in the list of top run-getters. Never mind the batsmen from Test-playing nations, Umar follows players from Netherlands, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Canada in the table.

Umar has scored 211 runs from five innings, with a single half-century. Among his team-mates, he is followed by Misbah (192), Kamran Akmal (188), Younis Khan (172), Mohmmed Hafeez (172), Asad Shafiq (124 from two innings) and Abdul Razzaq (101). Of the batsmen, only Misbah and Younis have scored more than one fifty in the tournament, and the team have managed nine overall. When compared to India, those are paltry figures: India have five centuries, ten fifties and five India batsmen have scored more runs than Umar.

Yet Pakistan finished at the top of their group and, regardless of the weakness of some of its Associate opposition, had the more emphatic first four weeks of the tournament between the two teams. In Mohali, after a lengthy round of football, fielding and then the conventional nets, Misbah deconstructed the numbers down to their bare basics. "According to me, the most important thing for any team is winning. If we don't score a hundred and win the World Cup, then that is very good for us. If we score centuries and get knocked out of the tournament, then it's no use."

In India, Misbah's public persona is built on the image of the man who tried the scoop shot and failed, handing India the World Twenty20 title in 2007. In person, he carries himself with gravitas; he speaks slowly but certainly. He will be beaten in any short words-per-minute contest by his captain Shahid Afridi or Younis. Like he has done through his career, though, Misbah is the man for the long haul. He has been central to Pakistan's progress in the World Cup, where their batting may not look like a strong suit, but its main thread is holding firm.

"It's really a plus for teams whose batsmen are in form, are scoring centuries and are in the top 20 run-scorers, but winning is important," Misbah said. "If you score a fifty or even a timely twenty or thirty that is vital for a victory, then that's good enough for the team." This under-the-radar cricketing approach has worked for Pakistan, particularly after the horrors of the England tour now called the 'spot-fixing series.' Pakistan have won 14 of their 31 ODIs since the 2010 Asia Cup, their batsmen have managed totals of more than 250 the same number of times, with Pakistan winning nine of those games.

The Pakistan batsmen could find the best batting conditions they have encountered so far in the tournament in Mohali, after spending five weeks grinding it out on slow, low tracks in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The lack of pace off the pitches has been, Misbah said, a "struggle". In some parts of the subcontinent, contrary to the stereotype, "runs don't come easy," Misbah said. "The ball is turning, the bounce is low, so just like when we go outside these conditions and struggle against bounce and pace, scoring runs here on these wickets is an art too. And those who know how to play on low-bouncing wickets, they can do well and score runs. But batting can be a struggle." It is why this has been far from a batsman's World Cup.

In Sri Lanka, Misbah said, batsmen required a "tightness" of play. "The new ball seams, the spinners get help later and you have to work as a batsman, because the tracks help bowlers of both types." In Bangladesh, he said, batsmen needed to be patient, to adjust. "Because of both low bounce and turn, batting requires you to really spend time and build an innings."

Pakistan's players have watched several of the World Cup matches held in India, and Misbah said the variety he saw across venues meant there never really was one defined 'type' of Indian pitch.

Once upon a time Mohali had a 'type': quick, bouncy and friendly for the fast men. That legend has faded and it is what India, in particular, will be pleased about, as batsman for batsman and numbers for numbers, they will believe they are better than their semi-final opponents.

Pakistan need not have bothered to haul over a slab of black stone to be put to use in the nets. The throwdowns given to every batsman on one of the practice pitches were made to pitch on the stone, Misbah explained, to generate bounce that the practice wickets did not quite contain. The real wicket probably won't contain it either.

Of the World Twenty20 final which he had all but snatched away from India before that last-over shot, Misbah said: "You can't just stick to the past. Every game is a new game, it's not like this game is important because of that match. To us every game is special. This one especially; this is the World Cup, it is a semi-final. I really want to do well."

Memory is a meaningless ghost for a cricketer like Misbah, who has had an up-and-down career, at one stage dropped from the Test and one-day squads only to return as Test captain. There was speculation that he may have been handed the role of one-day captain as well for the World Cup, but the selectors stuck with Afridi, who is never under the radar, but in this World Cup has not come through as the destructive batsman the world knows he can be. He has only 65 runs at 10.83 in the tournament, but the strike-rate monster that lurks within him may just light up at the sight of the handkerchief-sized ground in Mohali.

From being under the radar for over five weeks, Misbah and his team will now face the floodlights in a World Cup semi-final at a stadium which may have a low capacity, but will have a heavy-duty crowd.