IT’S A KEEN UP ACT!

India skipper Rohit Sharma (left) and Virat Kohli at Ahmedabad yesterday. Pics/PTI, Getty Images

For eight hours on Saturday, the eyes of the cricket world will be trained on the action that unfolds at the Narendra Modi Stadium. On paper, this is just another league clash in the 2023 World Cup, but how can India-Pakistan be just another match?

To many, this is the final before the grand final at the same venue on November 19. Understandably, the contingents from both teams don't share that view, well aware that while the trappings around the game will develop a life of their own for reasons beyond their control, what they can control is the effort they put into the contest.

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Big Pak thrashing

For those on the outer, India's overwhelming 7-0 World Cup record against their fiercest rivals, and the record 228-run win in the last showdown between the sides, in Colombo last month, hold significant import. Rohit Sharma doesn't subscribe to that theory. The Indian captain is a firm believer in staying in the present, and his colleagues have played enough for the skipper not to have to drive that point home.

Pakistan players in a huddle prior to their practice session yesterday

India will be buoyed by the imminent return of Shubman Gill, inarguably the best ODI batsman in the world this year. Having contracted dengue and missed the opening two matches, the right-handed opener is ‘99% available', as Rohit put it, for the morrow. Gill had the measure of Pakistan's powerful pace attack in Sri Lanka last month; he spent nearly an hour at the nets in blazing sunshine on Thursday morning and was part of the training session on Friday evening as well, indications that he should come in for Ishan Kishan.

Pakistan have matched India's roaring start - victories over Australia and Afghanistan - with twin wins of their own, and will have taken tremendous heart from their World Cup record chase against Sri Lanka in Hyderabad three nights back. Mohammad Rizwan, who shored up that chase with a brilliant hundred, reiterated that there is more to their batting than just classy captain Babar Azam, whose ODI record against India isn't all that flattering - 168 runs, average 28, highest 48 in seven matches. Babar will look at this game as another glorious opportunity to set the record straight and show what is expected to be the largest crowd at an ODI why he is among the premier batsmen of his generation.

Morale-lifting victory

Both teams will have six matches to go at the end of Saturday's skirmishes, but the outcome will go a long way towards lifting morale and facilitating the winner's progress to the knockout semi-finals. Without the injured Naseem Shah, Pakistan's pace attack doesn't wear the same threatening look of the past against an in-form Indian batting line-up; the stage is set for towering left-arm quick Shaheen Shah Afridi, who has had a quiet tournament thus far, to step up and prove what he is made of.