A blistering hundred by Virender Sehwag in sweltering heat and humidity resurrected the Indian innings after Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly had fallen in the second over, silencing the capacity crowd at Kochi. While Tendulkar fell to a horrid pull shot, Ganguly suffered the classic out-of-form batsman's dismissal; bowled leg-stump as he walked across to Naved-ul-Hasan.

Sehwag was then joined by Rahul Dravid, for whom the challenge was not new. The duo bailed India out with a purposeful stand of 201. At one stage, the Indians looked poised for a score of over 300, which in extremely trying conditions would have been more than enough to secure a win. But the Pakistani bowlers came back well in the final 15 overs to restrict the Indians to 281-8. Sehwag, who can do no wrong, reached a hundred in only 95 balls, but perished immediately thereafter. His fall brought about the by-now mandatory lull in the scoring rate, and the Indians never managed to increase it substantially. To add to their woes, even as Dravid neared his hundred in near-exhaustion, his partners fell to ambitious strokes. Dravid was in no physical shape to go for the big hits in the end overs, but he fought hard before getting run out. Inzamam and his team would have certainly backed themselves to get the runs with their explosive batting line-up, ideally suited to one-day cricket.

The Pakistani innings got off to a flying start, but it was queer on the part of the think-tank not to send in Shahid Afridi to open the batting. One would have thought that he was the best bet in the first 15 overs, when the entire field was up and there were only two fielders outside the 30-yards circle. That he was good enough to open in Tests and not good enough to open in one-day cricket was odd. Although Salman Butt and Kamran Akmal started in scintillating fashion, they departed in quick succession to excellent catches in the infield by Sehwag and Ganguly respectively. A horrendous shot by Shoaib Malik went straight to Yuvraj at point, and a few runs later, Yousuf Youhana was breathtakingly caught and bowled by Zaheer Khan. Pakistan had slipped from 45-0 to 64-4, and they never really recovered.

Ganguly saw this as the best time in which to consume a few overs of the fifth bowler, and asked Sachin Tendulkar to have a go. He went on to have a ball, first castling Inzamam and then bagging four more wickets to seal the game in India's favour. With the asking rate well above six, Inzamam knew that he had to take his chances against India's 'weak link'. He attempted to steer Tendulkar, but missed and was bowled. That was the beginning of the end. The lower order succumbed to Tendulkar's one-man 'variety show', which featured leg-breaks, off-breaks, leg-cutters, off -cutters and googlies. The innings ended in the 46th over when Naved was bowled by Zaheer Khan. India had won by 87 runs. Ganguly, who flopped with the bat yet again, couldn't have asked for a better start after the horrific performance at Bangalore. If he gets some runs and his team wins the second game to go 2-0 up in the series, he will be the happiest man on this planet.

highlight of the second innings, besides Tendulkar's second five-wicket haul in a one-day international at Kochi, was the Indian fielding. Yuvraj Singh and Mohammed Kaif showed what the Indians had missed in the Test series, not allowing the batsmen easy singles and intensifying the pressure as the asking rate climbed. It was heartening to see Ganguly, probably the worst fielder in the team along with Ashish Nehra, throw himself around like a man possessed.

That Ganguly was giving more than a hundred percent on the field, was a good sign. That he was doing so when his team was under the pump after a horrendous Test defeat, when his job as captain and very presence in the team was on the line, wasn't. If he could field like that in every game, not just when the pressure was on him to prove himself, he and his team will go places.

Both teams have displayed a worrying tendency to loosen the grip on their opponent's throat earlier in the series. The Indians did that at Bangalore after winning in Kolkata, and the Pakistanis did that in the first one-day international at Kochi after the win at Bangalore. With five one-day matches and a lot of cricket left in the one-day series, it remains to be seen whether India will continue this tradition, or break it and tighten the grip until the opponent succumbs.