Story Pakistan's International season [BLIC]

[nightprowler10]

In a silly attempt to a turn a single into a double, Geriant was able to get his partner runout. Ashley Giles was well out of his crease by the time the bowler removed the bails. England 189/7! They need 111 runs to win with only three wickets left. Hoggard in to bat next.

 

[nightprowler10]

Shortly after Giles' dismissal, Jones was able to get his well deserved half century, but his little feat may be in vain. Soon after Jones' 50, Inzamam went ahead and got the new ball, and Shoaib Akhtar was able strike a blow to England right away as Hoggard edged out on an inswinger. England are now 200/8!

 

[nightprowler10]

Pakistan win the series 2-1

Shoaib Akhtar and Muhammad Amir took the new ball and guided Pakistan to victory with it over the England team. Once Hoggard was gone, all the English batting could depend on was Jones, since Harmison soon followed Hoggard to sit in the pavillion. Harmison played a shot straight into the hands of forward short leg. First ball of the next over, Jones played one of Shoaib's slower ones into the stumps, ending the match for England. Pakistan win the match by 89 runs! Pakistan win the series 2-1.

​

 

[nightprowler10]

Man of the Match

There were a couple of candidates for the man of the match award for this match, but the obvious choice was none other than Mohammad Yousuf, who scored closed to 200 runs in two innings to ensure Pakistan's victory.

Mohammad Yousuf​

Interviews and Man of the series award will presented later.

 

[m_vaughan]

Good win for Pakistan, should boost their confidence ahead of the India series.

 

[jazz]

yes they should be favourites to beat india

 

[nightprowler10]

Man of the Series

There were many great performances from players like Inzamam, Flintoff, Yousuf, Vaughan, etc. But none of them performed consistently enough to thoroughly deserve the man of the series award. The only exception being the man who stirred up controversy after scoring a match winning century with his odd looking bat and took 21 of England's wickets at a healthy average, Muhammad Amir.

 

[m_vaughan]

Yup he sure deserved it

 

[nightprowler10]

Inzamam ecstatic over series win

Given that it was Pakistan's first series win for two years, as well as the first under Bob Woolmer, an understandably exultant Inzamam-ul-Haq called the 2-1 series win against England one of the best he has played in during his 13 years as an international player. "This is one of the biggest wins of my career. It was a total team effort and I would not single out any one player. They really worked hard and at the right times we performed in the series."

England arrived in Pakistan with six successive series wins behind them including the Ashes summer triumph. With Pakistan's poor recent home record, few people thought a 2-1 home win likely, but Inzamam said he had always been confident of a good performance. "A lot of people had ruled us out before the series but we had performed well and I had the confidence that we would do better and would win. We were playing in our home conditions and that was a plus, but we still need improvement in all three departments."

These paragraphs are excerpts from this article.

 

[nightprowler10]

Vaughan blames batsmen for defeat

A glorious year for England came to an end at a rather sad note.

They were just beaten in the first test thanks to Amir's heroics, but then stole a win from Pakistan in the last few overs of the second test. In both matches, England were a force to be reckoned with. But in the third match, apart from Ian Bell's superb century and the tail-enders' heroics, England's batting was pretty "ordinary", as described by their captain, Michael Vaughan.

"Our bowlers bowled very well and gave us a chance to take this game away from Pakistan, but our batters didn't perform and the opposition was able to secure the match and the series.

"Pakistanis played well throughout the series and never seemed to let up. They played as a unit, which is why they won. We have a lot of thinking to do ahead of the India tour. In the meanwhile, we'll be watching the India vs Pakistan series very closely for obvious reasons".

 

[nightprowler10]

Followed by post series celebrations, the Pakistani team is raring to go up against India in the coming months. PCB announced today that it will be setting up practice camps in Lahore ahead of the first test against India. The finalized schedule has also been announced by the board:

1st Test - Lahore
Jan 13 - 17

2nd Test - Faisalabad
Jan 21 - 25

3rd Test - Karachi
Jan 29 - Feb 2

1st ODI - Peshawar
Feb 6

2nd ODI - Rawalpindi
Feb 11

3rd ODI - Lahore
Feb 13 (D/N)

4th ODI - Multan
Feb 16 (D/N)

5th ODI - Karachi
Feb 19

 

[nightprowler10]

India announce squad

The BCCI has announced the 16 man squad that is scheduled to tour Pakistan over the next couple of months.

* *Rahul Dravid
* Virender Sehwag
* Gautam Gambhir
* Wasim Jaffer
* Sachin Tendulkar
* VVS Laxman
* Yuvraj Singh
* Sourav Ganguly
* +MS Dhoni
* Parthiv Patel
* Irfan Pathan
* Zaheer Khan
* Ajit Agarkar
* Rudra Pratap Singh
* Anil Kumble
* Harbhajan Singh

This will be the first time Rahul Dravid will be captaining the Indian test team against Pakistan.

 

[nightprowler10]

Amir bat controversy comes to an end

There is normally some sort of controversy surrounding any series between these two cricketing nations. Some controversy from the England series seeped into this one as the Indian coach Greg Chappell supposedly made a comment about the Pakistani bowler Muhammad Amir's bat.

Fortunately, this specific topic of debate was put down today as Amir broke his now famous bat during a practice session in front of thousands who had showed up to watch their team practice.

 

[m_vaughan]

Thats the funniest way to end a controversy!

 

[nightprowler10]

Announcement!

From here on, I will be playing all of the games in this story thread on Brian Lara International Cricket. Playing EA Cricket 2004 was starting to feel like a chore anyway. Moving on, the first series I will be doing with BLIC is Pakistan vs India test series. I will do my very best to make the matches as realistic as humanly possible. For starters, I will be using the following:

• Indian Test kit with the Nike logo (Drewska)
• Pakistani Test kit (WitchKing)
• Allianz stumps (Hariz)

For all the Muhammad Amir fans out there ( : ), he will be retained in the BLIC version of this story where he will presume his role that is closer to reality. That is, a medium fast bowler with batting abilities of an improving tail ender. Besides, he can't concentrate on his batting without his special AC/DC bat.