Chennai, December 30: 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.
Dhoni, who was dropped by Misbah-ul-Haq off the bowling of Hafeez when he was batting 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.
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