Heading into Monday’s game against England, Pakistan must’ve been under tremendous pressure. They were facing a team that’s touted as the favourite to win the World Cup, a team that’s playing at home, a team that had beaten them 4-0 in a One-Day International series recently, a team that was coming in after a resounding victory in its first match of the tournament.
Even their most ardent fans would’ve hesitated in betting on Sarfaraz Ahmed and Co. They’d suffered a humiliating defeat in their first game, which was their 11th straight loss in ODIs. However, the captain knew what his team was capable of. “Today was a bad day. I’m confident my team will bounce back,” he’d said after losing to West Indies.
‘Bounce back’ doesn’t really inspire confidence when it comes to Pakistan, though. It doesn’t necessarily imply that they’ll regroup as a unit. It could just as well mean that they’ll stun audiences by utterly dominating a passage of play in their next match, before disappearing again. Which is precisely why the 14-run win over England was all the more impressive.
Pakistan weren’t handed the victory on a platter. It wasn’t as if they got lucky with the opposition having a horrid day. England, the No 1 ranked ODI team, put in a performance that would’ve been enough to cross over the line on most days. Pakistan took a legitimate, powerful blow from the world’s best and still came out on top. They fought till the last ball to put an end to their embarrassing losing streak.
All-round batting effort
As if the odds weren’t stacked against them anyway, Pakistan didn’t get their way at the toss as well. After being blown away with the bat against the West Indies, they were looking to field first this time around. But Ahmed didn’t call right, Eoin Morgan opted to bowl, and the visitors had to strap their pads on. However, not a lot went wrong for the men in green after that point.
In a game that saw 682 runs being scored, Pakistan had the bigger share even though none of their batsmen registered a hundred while England had two centurions. It was a remarkably calm and professional outing with the bat for the 1992 champions.
Imam-ul-Haq and Fakhar Zaman laid the foundation with an 82-run opening stand. Babar Azam then showed us why he’s rated so highly by dominating the middle overs, before Mohammad Hafeez and Ahmed took over. The sequence of scores for the first five batsmen was 44, 36, 63, 84 and 55. Of course, any coach would want to see at least one century on the scorecard, but having almost your entire batting order contribute is an ideal scenario.
In their previous match, England had surprised one and all by bowling South Africa out for just 207. With Jofra Archer spitting fire, the team was looking more than just a batting powerhouse. But Pakistan didn’t once panic against the English attack. Uncharacteristically, they kept their composure despite losing wickets at regular intervals and not having a single hundred-run partnership. Archer went wicket-less in his full quota, while Adil Rashid had figures of 0/43 from five overs.
The standout batsman was Hafeez. The veteran right-hander understandably won the player of the match award for his 84 off 62 ball. Even as the batsmen above and below him – Azam and Ahmed – struggled to keep up the run-rate, the 38-year-old kept attacking and finished with a strike-rate of 135.48. He’s had an inconsistent run lately but has been given an important job to do for his team at No 4. His match-winning knock is definitely the biggest positive for Pakistan going into the next game.
Spirited in the field
No matter the scoring trends in ODIs of late, a target of 349 in a World Cup match is a tall order. Even if you’re an English side that’s been redefining 50-over batting over the past few years. Pakistan needed to start striking from the outset to not give their opponents a chance. And they managed to do so by taking a leaf out of Faf du Plessis’ book. Shadab Khan opened the bowling and removed the dangerous Jason Roy in the third over. It was the second time in as many games that England had lost an opener to a leg-spinner.
Pakistan didn’t lose focus on the task at hand and soon enough, their mighty opponents were reeling at 118/4 in 21.2 overs. Roy, Jonny Bairstow, Morgan and Ben Stokes were back in the hut and it looked like the visitors were going to run away with the game. But there’s a reason why England’s batting is revered, it’s because of the depth they possess. Joe Root and Jos Buttler got together to put on a masterful partnership. It was as if they were oblivious to the scoreboard and were simply enjoying their batting. In less than 17 overs, they added 130 runs to put their team in the driver’s seat.
England still had a fair way to go, though. They needed 103 runs from 12 overs with just six wickets in hand. But such was the dominance of Root and Buttler till that point that a win for the hosts seemed inevitable. However, just when it all seemed lost for Pakistan, they pulled off the biggest surprise. Ahmed brought Shadab Khan back into the attack and the leg-spinner got rid of Root immediately.
Buttler couldn’t get the job done either after mis-timing a slower ball from Mohammad Amir to short-third. It was a massive moment in the match as the right-hander would’ve surely taken his team home had he survived till the end. Wahab Riaz then removed Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes in the 48th over to put the result beyond doubt. While Riaz was spoken about more after the match for his twin strike, it was Amir who without a doubt had the bigger impact.
Apart from getting the all-important wicket of Buttler, the 27-year-old also dismissed Jofra Archer and bowled an impressive opening spell of 0/27 from five overs. He would’ve finished the game in that initial period had Azam held on to Root’s edge at wide-ish first slip when the right-hander was on nine. Amir has been through a lot in his career and the management’s faith in him, despite a horrendous last couple of years, reaped dividends in a crunch game.
Not a lot can be made of Pakistan’s victory on Monday. After all, they have both the highest and lowest team totals at this World Cup so far. In just two matches, they’ve scored their second-highest as well as second-lowest score in World Cup history.
But after the barren run they’ve had in the lead up to the tournament, a hard-fought triumph against favourites England should surely ignite a fire within the Pakistan team.