Seven-nil. On its biggest stage, cricket's most fraught rivalry really hasn't lived up to its billing.
None of the six previous World Cup meetings between India and Pakistan produced anything approaching a tight finish, but most of them contained tense passages of play and moments of crackling electricity. Sunday at Old Trafford had none of that. There was plenty of quality cricket, but nearly all of it was from one side.
Rohit Sharma smashed a century, Virat Kohli rewrote the history books as India kept their perfect World Cup record against Pakistan intact.
Rohit Sharma scored his second hundred in three innings as India maintained their unbeaten record against Pakistan at the World Cup with an 89-run win under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method on Sunday.
KL Rahul, batting in his preferred position thanks to the enforced absence of Shikhar Dhawan, made a solid half-century in an opening stand of 136. Virat Kohli came to the crease, occupied it like a favourite bit of lawn furniture, and made 77 at comfortably over a run a ball without ever seeming to stretch himself.
These efforts set Pakistan a target of 337. This was a flat pitch, and India lost one of their two main fast bowlers, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, to hamstring stiffness after he had delivered just 2.4 overs, leaving the fifth and sixth bowlers 17.2 overs, rather than just 10, to handle. And yet, apart from a brief period during a 104-run second-wicket stand between Fakhar Zaman and Babar Azam, Pakistan never threatened to make a chase of it.
The Fakhar-Babar partnership only rarely hit high gear, partly because of the discipline from India's bowlers, even Vijay Shankar and Hardik Pandya and partly because Pakistan were looking to keep wickets in hand, perhaps with an eye on staying close to the DLS par score, given that rain had already caused a couple of brief interruptions.
The breakthrough arrived in the 24th over, courtesy a cocktail of drift, dip and turn. Drift drew Babar into playing at a wider line as Kuldeep floated one across him from left-arm over, opening a gap between bat and pad. Dip ensured the ball landed shorter than Babar wanted, causing him to push further out in front of his body than he would have wanted. Turn did the rest.
Dip forced Fakhar to top-edge a sweep in Kuldeep's next over, and Pakistan were 126 for 3. When Pandya followed up in the next over with the back-to-back wickets of Mohammad Hafeez and the dreadfully out-of-sorts Shoaib Malik, the contest was all but over.
The game dragged on for a while longer, though, thanks to a 40-minute spell of rain that shaved 10 overs off the chase. When play resumed, Pakistan needed 130 in 30 balls, with four wickets in hand, in front of stands that had gone two-thirds empty.
The match was probably won and lost in its first ten overs, when Pakistan chose to bowl in overcast conditions and failed to make use of them. Unlike most of the grounds at this World Cup, Old Trafford has long straight boundaries and short square ones, and with the clouds massed overhead it was the one place at which to bowl a fuller length. Barring Mohammad Amir, none of Pakistan's fast bowlers did this.
