The only moment which went in favour of Pakistan was the flip of the coin - Sarfaraz Ahmed won it, asked India to bat first and then things went south for him and his side. Barring Mohammad Amir, no other bowler was able to exert any control on the match as India galloped away to 337.
And then when they chased, they were troubled by the Indian seamers up front, stagnated in the middle phase and were then tied in knots against the spinners. By the time rain intervened, they had lost five wickets and it was then always going to be an uphill task. India were clinical as they wrapped up the match by 87 runs and captain Virat Kohli said that they always approached this game professionally and this bore fruits.
'We need to be professional'
"I think they outplayed us in the Champions Trophy final, but apart from that, we have played good cricket against them. If you focus on this game with too much emotion, things can go haywire. We never approach these games from the fans' atmosphere, but as cricketers, we need to be professional and understand what needs to be done on the field," Kohli said after the match.
Kohli also conceded that he too would have bowled first as the pitch had assistance for the bowlers under cloudy skies. He also spoke about the template which has been set and praised the responsibility shown by his players.
"The template has been really nice in the first three games till now - Rohit single-handedly winning us the first game, a team effort in the second and today was Rohit's day again. You could say that to get to 330, you need a team effort, KL set a great foundation with Rohit and Rohit after getting to 70-75 is unstoppable and he showed again why he's such a good ODI player," he added.
He praised the platform set by Rohit and Rahul which allowed him to play his own game and also enabled Hardik Pandya to come in later and inject momentum into the innings.
Indian spinners were brilliant and Kuldeep Yadav bowled the spell of the match, which proved to be too good for the Pakistan batsmen and Kohli put it down to the fact that his spinner was allowed to bowl an extended spell.
"They were thinking that he would go out of the attack sooner rather than later. That ball to dismiss Babar was just outstanding with the drift, the turn and just beating the batsman batting so well. This is the best he has been bowling since coming to England and him confident with Chahal is going to be an important factor for us in the tournament," the skipper added.
