So yesterday we witnessed the most unexpected outcome of the Champions Trophy 2017 held in England. It’s Pakistan who have thumped India in the finals and have emerged out as the champion of champions. Pakistan have had a splendid turnaround in their campaign after being thrashed by India in their opening game. When Pakistan entered the tournament as the 8th ranked team(last ranked among the teams in this CT as it had only 8 teams participating) no one in their wildest of dreams gave them a chance of even making it to the knockouts. They were trolled for their batting, laughed at their fielding, had reached a CT final for the first time but most importantly they delivered when it mattered the most. After being asked to bat first by India on a fresh flat wicket they came out all guns blazing. It was Fakhar Zaman’s day with the bat. He got an early escape in the 3rd over of the innings when Bumrah got him caught behind the wicket but on a no ball. This incident was quite unsettling for Bumrah which was quite evident from his bowling thereafter. Fakhar Zaman stroked a belligerent hundred which gave his team the momentum they needed. All the other batters contributed really well in the innings with Hafeez getting a quick fifty and Imad Wasim stroking some hefty blows to take Pakistan to the score of 338 in their allotted 50 overs. They would have well scored over 350 had it not been for Bhuvneshvar Kumar’s outstanding spell of fast bowling on this flat deck. Pandya too bowled really well with both giving 44 and 53 runs respectively in their quota of 10 overs. So now India had a daunting task ahead of them with 338 to chase in this nerve wrecking, high voltage grand finale.

The kind of bowling attack Pakistan had it was never going to be easy. Mohammad Amir came out with the ball and he was breathing fire. In the very first over he sent back Rohit Sharma with a brilliant delivery that came back late after pitching and he had no idea. Soon after he dismissed Kohli which was a big setback for India. India had just started to recover from those earlier setbacks and once again Amir proved to be too good for Indian batsmen. Shikhar Dhawan also nicked one to the keeper and the score was reduced to 33/3. Yuvraj and Dhoni did try to build a partnership to get India back into the game but they failed too. Kedar Jadhav played some good shots after that before falling prey to the wrist spinner at 9. On the other hand, Pandya looked good and played some extravagant shots with good outcomes. Of all the Indian batsmen he was the only one to show some resilience against the Pakistani bowling. He attacked all the bowlers making a quick fire 76 off just 43 bows before getting out. He was runout via a terrible misunderstanding with Jadeja and it was curtains for India. With him gone the slim hope had vanished too. With other remaining wickets falling cheaply India could manage only 158 runs on the board thus coming second by 180 runs. Along with Amir, Hasan Ali also took 3 wickets in his splendid spell of bowling. He only took the last wicket of India getting out Bhuvneshvar Kumar sending the entire team and the rest of Pakistan in the cries of victory.