West Indies will play Pakistan in the first of the four quarter-finals to be played at the Shere Bangla stadium in Mirpur. The winner of this game will play India-Australia at Mohali and that should make things interesting if both, India and Pakistan can get through to the next stage.

However, it is not about the semi-finals for now. There is a big matter of the quarter-finals, where Pakistan has obviously been lucky to play the West Indian side, instead of any of the teams. For one, West Indies have been one the weakest in the tournament so far and the only team to not win against a Test-playing nation except Bangladesh.

Their issue has been to do with the closing of the games where the side has taken the advantage at the start of the game but have failed to close out the game, which has made it difficult for them. Against South Africa, they had started off well thanks to a Darren Bravo innings but lost their way in the middle. In the England game they were on the verge of winning and knocking England out of the tournament - instead they lost their last four wickets for less than five runs and lost a game they should have easily won in the end. Against India, they needed 115 runs to win in the last 20 overs but collapsed to the guile of Zaheer Khan and went down in a heap.

Pakistan's run-up to the quarter-finals has been rather interesting. They started off with two easy wins, including one against the pre-tournament favourites Sri Lanka, but the batting struggled against Canada and then the bowling went for a toss against New Zealand. The comeback was strong as they beat Zimbabwe before overpowering the Australian side in the last game of the league stage.

West Indies will hope all their players get fit by the start of the knock-out stage. They wouldn't want the side to struggle without the presence of the likes of Chris Gayle, Kemar Roach and the newly injured Kieron Pollard, who suffered from a finger dislocation.

On the other hand, one can expect a fully fit Pakistan side to take field, as they will go into the game without Ahmad Shahzad, who has been out of form. The same team which had beaten the Aussies will take field except that Shoaib Akhtar could play.

Pakistan should go through except that they are very unpredictable.

Tag :- Chris Gayle   Pakistan   Shere Bangla Stadium   Shoaib Akhtar   West Indies