The ICC Champions Trophy, which kicked off Thursday yesterday with its first match between India and South Africa, enters its second day and second match between Pakistan and the West Indies of Group B Friday today.
In the opener first day match India beat South Africa by 26 runs, after 114 from Shikhar Dhawan at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff.
It was here in 2004 when the West Indies won the Champions Trophy and when Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, and Ramnaresh Sarwan enter the Oval today, they will be reminded of their winning day some nine years ago.
Pakistan is without its some key players like Younis Khan and Shahid Afridi this year, which made Pakistan's matches against Ireland recently as Pakistan barely managed to beat Ireland. Pakistan's fast bowler Umer Gul is also out due to injury. This leaves Pakistan an uphill task to win over the experienced squad of the W indies. This leaves a heavy responsibility on Saeed Ajmal - Pakistan can rely on him to bowl economical overs and pick up important wickets as well.
In ICC ODI tournaments, Pakistan have beaten West Indies on four occasions and lost eight times. They won the last two encounters between the teams in ICC tournaments - in the 2009 Champions Trophy in South Africa and the World Cup quarter-final in Dhaka.
Pakistan are a tricky team and after a solid performance against South Africa in the warm-up game, they would be gearing up for the real challenge against West Indies. This makes today's match rather interesting to watch.
The likely opposing teams for the match are:
Pakistan squad
Misbah-ul-Haq*, Abdur Rehman, Asad Ali, Asad Shafiq, Ehsan Adil, Imran Farhat, Junaid Khan, Kamran Akmal†, Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Irfan, Nasir Jamshed, Saeed Ajmal, Shoaib Malik, Umar Amin, Wahab Riaz
West Indies squad
DJ Bravo*, D Ramdin†, TL Best, DM Bravo, J Charles, CH Gayle, JO Holder, SP Narine, KA Pollard, R Rampaul, KAJ Roach, DJG Sammy, MN Samuels, RR Sarwan, DS Smith
Umpires SJ Davis and NJ Llong
The match is scheduled on Friday, 7 June (09:30 GMT) | at Kennington Oval, London.
If you are one of the fans located at different destination and miss the chance to visit the stadium to watch your favorite team, You can now watch the match live on your laptop or desktop computer, FREE, provided you have an internet connection, from the links given below:
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