NEW DELHI: With vociferous home fans cheering them, India will have the upper-hand in the semifinal of the cricket World Cup, feels Pakistan hockey player Rehan Butt who expects the crowd to play a "decisive" role in the eagerly-awaited contest on Wednesday.
Butt said from his own experience, he is sure that it would be intimidating for the Pakistani players to play in front of wildly cheering Indian fans in Mohali.
"It is not the battle of skills. It is about handling the pressure and whoever handles it well, will win. Crowd support will be decisive as it was in the hockey World Cup and the Commonwealth Games last year. I guess Mahendra Singh Dhoni's team will have added advantage this time," Butt told 'PTI-Bhasha' from Lahore.
The Indian Hockey team had defeated Pakistan (4-1) in World Cup league match in Delhi last year and repeated the success at Commonwealth Games (7-4) in November.
Pakistan captain Zeeshan Ashraf and seniors such as Butt and Shakeel Abbasi had blamed the Indian crowd for the defeats.
"We were at the receiving end in the two pressure matches against India on their soil last year. Naturally the Pakistani Cricket team will also face adverse crowd and it depends upon the players now that how they cope up with that," said the veteran striker.
"There is unprecedented hype and excitement for this match. Pakistani people were supporting India in the quarter final against Australia. They wanted to see Indo- Pak match. We hope that both the teams play their best," he said.
When asked about how similar is the hype and pressure in hockey and cricket encounters, he said that there is not much difference.
"The only difference is cricket is a slow game while hockey is fast as you have only 70 minutes to perform," he said.
"We must get (Virender) Sehwag and Sachin (Tendulkar''s) wicket early. If they get into the groove it will be hard for Pakistan to make a comeback," said Rehan.