Rameez Raja nails Indo-Pak prediction

Former Pakistan cricketer Rameez Raja is a renowned cricket analyst and commentator around the world. He is a part of all the major tournaments in international cricket and the ICC Champions Trophy is no different. He won 57 Tests for Pakistan and also appeared in 198 ODIs where he scored 2833 and 5841 runs respectively.

Before the start of the ICC Champions Trophy, an elite panel of sportsmen including Ricky Ponting, Ian Bishop, Nasser Hussain, Sanjay Manjrekar, Brendon McCullum, Graeme Smith, Shane Warne and Rameez himself were asked to predict two finalists who will play each other on June 18 at the Oval. England, Australia and India were widely tipped as the favourites to lift the title and hence everyone had one team or the other in their predictions.

It was only Rameez Raja who picked an India-Pakistan final, a prediction nobody would have thought to come true. Not many gave Pakistan a chance at the start of the tournament as they were an average ODI unit. But they are known to be a side who can surprise big teams in ICC tournaments and so they did. They did lose their opening game against India but came back by giving lion-hearted performances against South Africa, Sri Lanka and England to reach the finals of the mega event.

India’s road wasn’t too smooth either. After losing to Sri Lanka in a group game, they came back strongly to defeat South Africa and then Bangladesh to enter the finals. It will be a huge final with millions of people watching it from all corners of the globe.

Rameez, however, picked Pakistan as the eventual winners. We will have to wait for Sunday to find out if Rameez’s prediction comes off. On current form and past track records, India are firm favourites to lift the Champions Trophy for the second time in a row.