And how many times in this tournament we have seen a score in excess of 200? It is not easy as it sounds. Especially in the UAE, overs 7-15 have proven to be very difficult for scoring. I can't remember a single one out of the 16 teams performing well with the bat on a consistent basis during this phase. It should not happen ideally, but in the UAE, teams batting second are having an unfair advantage. And this happened during both the semi-final matches. So toss is very important for the final and the team winning it will have a greater chance of lifting the trophy.
Pakistan scored 175 runs playing first and its was close finish despite the fact that Pakistan got 5 Australian wickets. So the team batting first need to score over 180 in order to remain in the match.
What we have seen is that side batting second score most of the runs in last 5 overs, as evident from NZ/Eng and Pak/Aus semifinals.
I think it was done by India once in the tournament that they scored in excess of 200 runs in the first innings. I do not remember any other match where any team scored 200+ runs. But my wording was that a score of 170-200 could be a competitive score if scored in the final.
Also doesn't the teams playing second face the same difficulty in batting from 7 - 15 overs ?
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