1st ODI: India vs Pakistan

NEW DELHI: Indian captain MS Dhoni played a brilliant captain's innings to score a century and help India post a competitive 228-run target for Pakistan in the first ODI on Sunday.

Scorecard

Dhoni, who was dropped by Misbah-ul-Haq off the bowling of Hafeez at 16, remained not out at 113 at the end of the 50 overs and put up a crucial 125-run partnership with Ravichandran Ashwin (31*).

Earlier, Hafeez proved elementary in breaking the 73-run partnership between Suresh Raina and Dhoni

Raina (43), who had been struggling to play Hafeez throughout his innings, failed to read a slow delivery and was bowled when the ball struck the leg stump.

The dismissal of Raina allowed Ashwin to come to the crease and he along with Dhoni, who hit 7 boundaries and 3 sixes, lead the Indian charge to pick up pace of the Indian innings.

Earlier, the duo of Dhoni and Raina stabalised the Indian innings after encountering a bad start when Junaid Khan and Mohammad Irfan sent the Indian top order packing.

Virender Sehwag (4), Gautam Gambhir (8), Virat Kohli (0) and Yuvraj Singh (2) were clean bowled one after the other as they failed to withstand the fierce Pakistani pace attack of Junaid and Irfan.

Rohit Sharma (4) was the next in line to be dismissed when he completely failed to read Junaid's brilliant swinging delivery and was caught brilliantly at third slip by Mohammad Hafeez.

Sharma's wicket gave Junaid his fourth wicket of the match and proved crucial for Pakistan as India lost half its side inside 10 overs.

Earlier, Pakistan won the toss and elected to bowl against India.

The toss, originally scheduled for 8.30am (IST), took place at 9.30am, due to wet outfield. The match will be played without any reduction in the number of overs.

The delay was expected as the city had been lashed by rain in the past couple of days.

Pakistan included Azhar Ali, Younis Khan, Junaid, Irfan in the squad. Shoaib Malik replaced Umar Akmal.

On the other hand Sehwag replaced Ajinkya Rahane in the XI that played in Ahmedabad two days ago.

The match is being played under the new ODI rules which allow two bouncers and over among other things.

India: Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni (C), R Ashwin, Ishant Sharma, Ashok Dinda

Pakistan: Nasir Jamshed, Younis Khan, Mohammad Hafeez, Misbah-ul-Haq (c), Kamran Akmal, Azhar Ali, Shoaib Malik, Junaid Khan, Umar Gul, Saeed Ajmal, Mohammad Irfan