The third one day international saw Pakistan pay a heavy price for what they have been doing since a year or so. A year long rest proves very crucial for the Pakistanis. For, when they are back to their playing days, they can hardly afford to crack the opposition in any manner in any department of the game. A 234 run defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankans is something unbearable whatsoever. For, even the 245 run defeat at the hands of Sri Lankans some nine years ago was unacceptable and this led to so many changes to the then Indian team. Members of the team like Nayan Mongia and Vinod Kanbli never ever tended to look back after sometime from the day they registered this huge defeat.
Pakistan fell just short of making into the record books for having a defeat of the highest margin in one day cricket as far as only the test playing teams of the world are considerd. Of course there have been instances where India imposed a 257 run defeat over Bermuda in the World Cup 2007 and in 2003 world cup, Australia inflicted a mammoth defeat of 256 runs. For the sake of stats, India has the record of inflicting the highest ever margin of defeat against any team in the world. And at the same time, India is the victim of having been beaten by a world record margin despite playing test cricket for years altogether.
It is still not understandable as to what was going on in the minds of the Pakistani cricketers which saw them succumb to such a low total of 75 while Sri Lanka's team total went well past 300. The variation between the performances of these two teams should be indeed given a re think whatsoever. If the past performances between Sri Lanka and Pakistan is taken into consideration, Pakistan should have had an upper hand in this match. Especially after their 8 wicket victory in the first one day international at Karachi. Pakistan have won the last 7 out of the 10 one day matches played against Sri Lanka. The three losses being in the third one dayer in the three match ODI series that followed after the world cup 2007 and two in the current series.
Despite for not having been playing cricket for a year long time, Pakistan managed to beat the West Indies 3-0 during their tout in Abu Dhabi convincingly. Of course they should have and have beaten Bangladesh and Zimbabwe 5-0 each. But, it is still not clear as to what happened to the Pakistanis when they faced a team which struggled against minnows Zimbabwe and Bangladesh in all the games they have faced each other. It is a wonder for a team to beat Pakistan after having the matches against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh in a toss. A loss to Sri Lanka meant the end of theor successful one day campaign of having won 14 one day internationals in a row. Pakistan beat Bangladesh and Zimbabwe 5-0 and the West Indies 3-0 and Sri Lanka in the first encounter before losing the second and third one.
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