Pakistan did what no one else so far had done in this tournament. They won the toss, batted and still won. It's pretty early still in the 1999 World Cup but most people seem to think that batting first is certainly not the way to go against the white ball in May.Things seemed to be going the West Indies' way when Pakistan were 42-4 but I think the team selection of the West Indies really showed up at this stage. When the West Indies should have had a fourth specialist bowler to try and get into the Pakistan batting, there was none. They had to be relying on Phil Simmons, Keith Arhturton, Jimmy Adams and Ricardo Powell to bowl 20 overs, that is 40 per cent of the total overs to be bowled. Surely, that is not on. As it turned out, those 20 overs cost the West Indies 123 runs, with 10 overs from Arthurton, Powell and Adams costing 83 runs.Take nothing away from Pakistan though, as they put together two very valuable partnerships. Ijaz Ahmed and Yousuf Youhanna put on 60 for the fifth wicket and then WasimAkram and Azhar Mehmood added 74 for the sixth. That enabled them to get a total of 224 runs, which although, a lot more than once thought at 42-4, did not seem an impossible score to get.Akram played a captain's innings, getting 42 off 28 balls but was fortunate not be given out stumped when on 26 as the appropriate replays from the fixed square-on cameras were not shown to the third umpire when he was called on to adjudicate.As at the beginning of the Pakistan innings, the West Indies were again in control when they started batting, although they lost their first wicket quite early when Sherwin Campbell was bowled by an express Shoaib Akhtar delivery. Opener Ridley Jacobs, alongwith Adams, then posted a reasonably comfortable 58-run partnership before the second wicket fell.But as West Indies allowed things to slip when they were on the field, they again allowed things to drift while batting. Brian Lara didn't last very long, getting 11 runs in quick time - eight of his first two deliveries -before skiing an attempted hit over the mid-wicket region which ended up on the off-side in the hands of Mushtaq Ahmed, substituting for Ijaz.After Lara's dismissal, only Shivnarine Chanderpaul offered any form of resistance getting a well-compiled 77 and was the last man out when the West Indies innings folded at 202.Pakistan certainly deserved their victory, as in my opinion, they did it the hard way. They batted when conditions were overcast and more conducive to bowling than batting, while the West Indies batted in the afternoon when it was much brighter and when occasionally the sun shone.
