Nasir Jamshed carried his bat to hand Pakistan a convincing six wicket win over India in the first One-Day international in Chennai on Sunday.
The left-handed opener struck 101 in 132 deliveries as the visitors chased down India's mediocre total of 6-227, achieved mainly due to an unbeaten 125-ball 113 from skipper MS Dhoni, in 48.1 overs, with Younis Khan (58) and Shoaib Malik (unbeaten 34 off 35) also making telling contributions.
Pakistan's chase began disastrously when Mohammad Hafeez (0) lost his off stump off the first ball of the innings as he shouldered arms to an in-swinger from Bhuvaneshwar Kumar (2-27).
And the visitors looked in more trouble when Azhar Ali fell to the same bowler with score 2-21 in the 11th over.
But Jamshed continued to hold one end up and put on 112 with Younis in 20.1 overs to get the chase back on track.
Younis fell against the run of play, hitting an Ashok Dinda (1-45) full toss to R Ashwin at mid-wicket and Misbah-ul-Haq (16) also did not last long to give India hope of turning the match around.
Pakistan would have been in some trouble when Ashwin (0-34) had Malik caught by Dhoni but the off-spinner had overstepped allowing the veteran batsman to see the match home.
Earlier, India were rocked by Junaid Khan (4-43) after being sent into bat on a seaming wicket and were reduced to 29-5.
Gautam Gambhir was bowled bu Mohammad Irfan (1-58) while Junaid cleaned up Virender Sehwag (4), Virat Kohli (0) and Yuvraj Singh (2) and also had Rohit Sharma (4) edge one to Hafeez at third slip.
Suresh Raina (43) then combined well with Dhoni to get India back on track before falling in the 34th over with the score at 6-102.
Dhoni found an able ally in Ashwin (unbeaten 31) and opened up towards the end of the innings with 81 runs coming in the final 10 overs.
The second game of the three-match series will be played in Kolkata on January 3.
First Posted 31 December, 2012 8:05AM AEST
