Pakistan won their second match of the Pepsi Cup, winning the third one-dayer of the Pepsi Cup by a whopping 143 runs. Set to score 279, India didn't even manage to get half-way to the target.

Wasim Akram won the toss and elected to bat on a fairly hot day. His openers gave him a dream start. Srinath bowled very tightly but at the other end Agarkar was given a real hammering by Afridi and Anwar. By the 6th over, Pakistan were near about the fifty mark. Agarkar's first 3 overs had cost him 31 runs. At the other end Srinath was repairing all the damage with a splendid display of bowling. While Agarkar was repeatedly giving a minimum of 10 runs every over, Srinath bowled thirteen dot balls at a stage, most of them to Afridi who was given absolutely no room to improvise and play his shots.

Exit Agarkar. Enter Kumble. Bye bye Kumble, or so we thought. Afridi launched himself into the leggie, hitting five boundaries in Kumble's first over. The crowd, who had been disappointed with the first 6 overs, was absolutely shocked with this manhandling of India's best one day bowler. In the next over from Srinath, Afridi broke the shackles with a huge six over long off. Kumble then switched to around the wicket and the move resulted in Afridi trying to go over the offside, presenting Chopra with a simple catch at mid off. But Afridi had caused a lot of damage to the bowlers' psyche by then. At 75/1 in the 10th over, Pakistan were looking at a total around 320, at least.

Ijaz Ahmed came in and along with Anwar steadied the ship and scored their runs quickly too. Spin came on from both ends. Chopra and Kumble bowled a tight spell, not giving the batsman many opportunities to score quickly. But Anwar and Ijaz wisely stuck to getting lots of singles and twos. They had added 75 in 15 overs when Ijaz was given out caught behind off Chopra. It was a dodgy decision. Inzamam was the new man in. Kumble was replaced by debutant Gyandendra Pandey. He bowled brilliantly and was extremely difficult to score off. Both Pandey and Chopra bowled a very tight line and this resulted in Anwar and Inzamam taking a few risks in order to speed up things. While 75 came off the first 10 overs in the innings, 75 came in the next 15, the next 50 came in 13, so it was a very good display of restrictive bowling.

Azhar surprised everyone by bringing on Dravid as the sixth bowler. The ploy was possibly to bowl as slow as possible, seeing that the spinners until then had done a great job. Dravid repaid his captain's faith in him with some tight bowling and as a bonus got the prized wicket of Anwar too, caught behind. It was his first wicket in international cricket, and certainly an important one too! Kumble then came on for his next spell from the other end and had Yousuf Youhana playing all over a yorker length delivery. Moin Khan came in ahead of Azhar Mahmood to join Inzamam. Then Inzamam, who had played very sensibly till then, lost his patience, and was bowled by yet another Kumble quicker one. Wasim Akram came in, and left quickly, hoicking Kumble's last delivery of his quota straight to Srinath at deep square leg.

Azhar Mahmood and Moin Khan then put up a valuable 20 run partnership in quick time, at around a run-a-ball. Moin got most of his runs with his favourite sweep shot from outside off. He was then bowled by Srinath in the 47th over. Abdur Razzaq joined Azhar Mahmood and the two ran some brisk singles to get Pakistan to a huge total of 278/9. It was far below the 320+ which looked imminent when Afridi and Anwar were blasting away at the beginning.

India needed a good start, and yet again the openers failed. This time Ganguly was out early, caught behind off Akhtar. He didnt seem to be too happy with the decision and the slow motion replays weren't conclusive either. Until then he had looked in good touch following his century in the earlier match. Jadeja at the other end managed to survive Akram and Akhtar's early hostile spells. Akhtar struck again when he bowled Dravid. With both the in-form batsmen gone, it was going to be an uphill task. Azharuddin, who was expected to play a captain's knock, didnt last long too. Abdur Razzaq had him fishing at one wide outside off for Moin to do the rest. Kambli's second match on his comeback lasted 4 balls, 2 more than against Sri Lanka. He had an allrun four of the first ball he faced and 3 balls later was back in the hut, plumb in front to a slower delivery from Razzaq.

At the other end, Jadeja was trying his best to hang around. However it was definitely not the first time the Indian batting had collapsed, especially considering the performances against Pakistan in the last 2 months or so. Mongia came in at #6, at least two places above what he ought to be playing at, which indicates the lack of batting depth. He and Jadeja then put the brakes on the batting collapse with a 30 odd run partnership in 12 overs or so. It was extremely slow going at a time when the asking rate was hovering around 6.5-7 runs per over. But runs were hard to come by and wickets were important too. Mongia was then out to a good piece of work from Moin. Arshad Khan tempted Mongia down the track, Mongia obliged, missed the ball altogether, the awkward bounce resulted in a slight fumble from Moin who recovered quickly to catch Mongia out of the crease.

Ajit Agarkar, upon whom India placed a lot of hope as a promising allrounder, did his 'allrounder' wannabe credentials no good, when he presented a return catch to Arshad. Agarkar tried to pull and ended up top edging back to the bowler who took a good catch running to his right. It was by then all over, bar the final rites. Gyanendra Pandey, in his first outing with the bat in an international, lasted 2 deliveries, stumped by Moin off Arshad. Nikhil Chopra and Ajay Jadeja played watchfully until Jadeja got to his fifty, made in around 85 deliveries or so. Then they got stuck into the spinners, Afridi in particular, with Chopra hitting a couple of huge sixes.

It was too good to last, as Chopra was run out when Jadeja attempted a quick single to backward point and Jadeja was out caught and bowled by Afridi. Srinath's attempt to hit Afridi all the way to Pakistan, ended up in Wasim Akram's hands inside the thirty yard circle. Pakistan had won by a huge margin. Saeed Anwar was the man of the match.

Pakistan take on Sri Lanka on March 27 at Vishakapatnam. India have replaced Kambli and Shukla with Robin Singh and Virendra Shewag for India's next match against Sri Lanka on 30th March at Pune.