Tanvir and Afridi finished things off in style for Pakistan

Younus (117) and Misbah-ul-Haq (49) put on 102 before Afridi and Tanvir took them past India's 321-9 in Mohali.

"Misbah and I were just thinking about staying in long enough," Younus said.

"The main thing, I thought, was if we gave Shahid and Tanvir around six or seven overs at the end it would be easy. Twelve or 14 would be difficult."

Pakistan's victory levelled the five-match series 1-1, with the action moving on to Kanpur on Sunday.

But skipper Shoaib Malik admitted it was too close for his comfort.

"I had three tablets for my blood pressure," he joked. "In the end credit goes to Younus, Misbah, Shahid and Sohail.

"We will get a lot of encouragement from winning this game and our morale is high now that it's 1-1."

Despite seeing his side pegged back in the series, India captain Mahendra Dhoni felt it had been "a good day for cricket".

We could have bowled better - we got off to a good start but didn't capitalise India captain Mahendra Dhoni

The hosts were in a strong position thanks to Sachin Tendulkar's brilliant 99, Gautam Gambhir (57) and Harbhajan Singh's blistering unbeaten 38 off only 20 balls at the end.

Harbhajan then took two wickets to leave the visitors struggling on 174-4.

"With the platform we had, we should have scored around 340," Dhoni said. "We could have bowled better - we got off to a good start but didn't capitalise on it."

However, Dhoni defended his decision to play an extra batsman and enter the game with only four frontline bowlers.

"I don't think we missed playing an extra bowler, as Sourav Ganguly bowled better than some of our regular bowlers," the skipper added.

"I still had other options out there in Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh, but Sourav bowled so well that I wasn't bothered about it."

Both teams were subsequently fined for slow over rates.

India named the same squad for the next two one-day matches in the series.