How India planned for its first cricket shoot-out

After the Oval blitz with the bat, Robin Uthappa bowled India to victory this time around. He laughs his heart out at the statement. “Match-winner with the ball, I enjoyed that, for sure,” he says.

Everyone at the ground loved it when Uthappa took a bow each in all directions to soak in the appreciation. He took the crucial third hit and made it 3-0 to virtually clinch it for India — and soon, Shahid Afridi’s miss meant India had defeated Pakistan.

“It wasn’t complicated at all. I just had to hit the stumps,” he says, while pleading not to ask him to pick one of the two as his best. “This was a perfect match for Dhoni to start as captain; a perfect India-Pakistan match that had everything you could ever ask for.”

Earlier in the day, Uthappa’s 50 had given India a fighting chance to shake off an early exit in the group stage and put up a decent score on the board. “Twenty20 is completely different from one-dayers, I didn’t like Twenty20, man,” he says.

Both teams were asked to hand out five names and the order in which they would bowl. Was it difficult?

Not really, says the bowling coach. The confidence came from the practice sessions they had. The selection trials had already given Venkatesh Prasad options. “I was very confident when we came to the bowl-out stage. I had to leave out Dhoni from that list, because he was very keen to bowl. Even when we were practising in the break ahead of the bowl-out, all our boys bowled and we were enjoying it. In fact, we have been practising bowl-out ever since the England tour. We divide (the team) into two groups and have competitions in this. So yesterday was just one more competition, with the other batch standing out, also wanting them to win for a change,” he smiles.

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