India vs Pakistan T20 World Cup 2022 Detailed Match Report

"Kohli goes down the ground, Kohli goes out of the ground," were the famous words from Harsha Bhogle on commentary to describle Virat Kohli's outrageous shot for a straight six against Pakistani speedster Haris Rauf in the edge-of-the-seat thrilling encounter between arch-rivals India and Pakistan during the group stage of the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 being hosted at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne. It was the opening fixture in the T20I tournament for both the teams sharing an intense rivalry. Due to some political issues, both India and Pakistan play against each other only at the ICC events since the 2012 bilateral series. In this article piece, check out the detailed report from the India vs Pakistan match in the 2022 T20 World Cup hosted by Australia. 

India vs Pakistan T20 World Cup 2022 Detailed Match Report

There was a big backstory involved ahead of this massive India Pakistan match. The Indian team suffered a humiliating 10-wicket victory against Pakistan during the group stage of the 2021 T20 World Cup in the UAE. This was the first time when India loss to Pakistan in World Cup cricket. During the 2022 Asia Cup played in the T20I format of the game, both these teams won a game each. Therefore, India definitely had some scores to settle against their arch-rivals as skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to bowl first. Pakistan got off to a disappointing start at the top having lost both their opening batters, skipper Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan with just 15 runs on the scoreboard. India's left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh bowled amazingly well to remove both the openers early on in the match. 

The duo of Shan Masood and Iftikhar Ahmed then bailed their team out of trouble with a fine partnership of 76 runs for the third wicket. Iftikhar tried to attack India's left-arm spinner Axar Patel smashing him for three huge sixes in the 12th over before fast bowler Mohammed Shami got the better of him. The big-hitting Pakistani batter notched up a fine knock of 51 runs off just 34 balls. Despite Maqsood scoring an unbeaten half-century, Pakistan managed to reach a fighting score of 159 for 8 in their quota of 20 overs. For India, the duo of Hardik Pandya and Arshdeep picked up three wickets each. 

During the nervy run-chase, India too got off to a poor start having reduced to 31 for 4 inside the first seven overs. Both the Indian openers, KL Rahul and captain Rohit Sharma were sent back to the pavilion in just the fourth over of the second innings. Pakistan's premier pace bowler Haris Rauf also removed Suryakumar Yadav to put the opposition in a huge trouble. The duo of Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya then joined hands to help their team make a comeback in the big-ticket encounter in front of a jam-packed MCG crowd. Both these batters started off in a decent manner to control the wicket-collapse. 

Hardik and Virat then decided to counter-attack Pakistan's left-arm spinner Mohammad Nawaz smacking him for three sixes in a single over as the required run-rate was slowly reaching out of the grasp region. It was during the 12th over when both the batters started to take on the Pakistani bowlers as they definitely needed to hit atleast a boundary in every over to stay in the run-chase. Pakistan's premier left-arm pacer Shaheen Afridi was returning after a long injury lay-off and thus, Kohli took advantage of his fitness issues notching up a total of 17 runs in the 18th over. 

The India vs Pakistan match was going away from the former's hands and then came the big moment in the cricket updates. India required 28 runs off 8 deliveries and Kohli blasted Haris for two magnificent sixes after which 16 runs were left in the final over. Pakistan were left with Nawaz to bowl the penultimate over where he dismissed Hardik off the first ball. Kohli then came to business with another six into the deep square region which came out to be a no ball. India required just 1 run from the last ball of the match when Ravichandran Ashwin drilled the final delivery over the mid-off region to win a thriller of an encounter at the MCG. 

In the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup 2024, India and Pakistan will once again face each other at the newly built Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York starting on 9 June, 2024. Both India and Pakistan are placed in the same group.