in most awesome fashion

I don't often say nice things about the Pakistan team. Reading billu.net, one might be inclined to think I don't even like them.

But I do. And they won. In most awesome fashion. And I am psyched.

It's been a while since I saw them perform so professionally. I will admit that after the last ODI I thought it was all over. In fact, I was going to post, but I got lazy. I was going to say that the management will now panic and start shuffling players around. I was going to say that every now and then you will lose badly, but it doesn't mean you freak out and change everything around.

Now that I've served up my words, I will proceed to eat them. Only two changes were made today: Azhar for Sami, and Nazir for Hafeez. Both worked out beautifully. Azhar bowled like he'd never been out of the side, and Nazir did the groundwork for what eventually became a phenomenal score.

They didn't panic - in fact, they stuck to their plan quite assiduously. The batting didn't collapse - in fact, it was rock solid. And even though Rana was shit as usual, Asif impressed by recovering from his infamous 28-run over to leak 29 runs in all 10 overs, just when South Africa were starting to go nuts.

Even when the team has played well in the past few months, they have given my cynicism little reason to fully subside. But bouncing back from a 164-run loss to a 141-run win comes pretty damn close.

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cross-posted at cricket.bloggers.pk