NEW DELHI, March 14: India savoured its sensational cricket win over Pakistan with newspapers on Sunday providing acres of coverage and a politician suggesting ties could further improve if the Indian premier travelled to Lahore for the final one-dayer.

Indian fans partied well into the early hours of Sunday after the adrenalin-coursing five-run victory in Karachi and the resumption of cricketing ties between the neighbours, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

Saturday's match was the first of five limited-overs games India will play during their 40-day tour and Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani suggested ties between the neighbours could improve if Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited Lahore for the March 24 one-dayer.

"If there is any such move, it will be a further step in improving ties between the two countries," Advani said on Sunday in reply to a question about the possibility of Vajpayee making a trip to Pakistan.

Vajpayee telephoned captain Saurav Ganguly and congratulated him the moment the match ended in Karachi while team players were mobbed by Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, the two inheritors of India's charismatic Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

Meanwhile the banner headline in The Times of India screamed "Karachi Captured," and it subtitled its front-page report on the match - which saw the highest ever number of runs ever scored in a One-day International, a total of 693 - "India on Fire."

"Big Bang Beginning," The Indian Express headline read, adding: "If this is day one, if this is cricket, just bring it on." The newspaper even devoted two columns to what paceman Ashish Nehra's dog did when the player started to bowl the final over, denying Pakistan the nine runs the hosts needed to beat India's 349.

The daily said the German Shepherd "stopped pacing to settle down quietly near a sofa, blinking" while his master bowled the nail-biting over to a capacity crowd of 33,000 people packed into Karachi's National Stadium.

"Run riot in Karachi," blared the The Pioneer. It said Nehra's success had exorcised the humiliation of the last-ball, match-winning six smashed against India by Pakistani batsman Javed Miandad - the current coach - in 1986.

"Each time the sixer is brought up in conversation with an Indian cricket fan from this day on, the Karachi six that wasn't will be the riposte," said the The Statesman in a euphoric page-one editorial.

In Islamabad, Indian team manager Ratnakar Shetty said more accolades were in store for Ganguly's boys in blue. "The team has been told there will be a meeting with the President Pervez Musharraf on March 17. We believe it is a get-together over tea," he said as Indian ambassador in Islamabad Shivshankar Menon planned a lavish dinner for the players the same day.

Back in India, the win dominated TV networks which replayed the game highlights and interviewed relatives and friends of the Indian players.

"There was tension and so I kept on praying while my son played," said Krishna Devi, mother of Indian batsman Virender Sehwag, who hammered 79 runs off 57 balls to lead India to their highest one-day total against Pakistan.

"It was Kaif and Nehra who clinched the game," Runu Goswamy, a fan from Kolkata, told a TV station. "We could see the replays a million times," she gushed. Kaif raced 20 metres (yards) and dived over Hemang Badani to clutch the ball off Shoaib Malik's bat, while Nehra conceded just three runs in the final over .-AFP