Pakistan beat Canada, stay alive in T20 World Cup

Pakistan needed to chase 107 against Canada, an Associate nation, in 14 overs to move ahead of USA in the Group A points table of the T20 World Cup but such has been the surface at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York that it took them 17.3 overs to get there. Interestingly, this also turned out to be the highest successful chase at the venue which was built specifically for the 2024 T20 World Cup.

The win kept Pakistan’s hopes of staying in the apex T20 tournament alive, which were severely dented due to narrow losses in the first two matches – against USA and India.

Canada scored 106/7 in 20 overs with opener Aaron Johnson top-scoring with 52 off 44 balls (4x4s, 4x6s).

Apart from him, only Nos 7 and 8, Saad Bin Zafar (10) and Kaleem Sana (13) could manage to get into double figures as Pakistan bowlers Mohammad Amir (2/13), Haris Rauf (2/26), Naseem Shah (1/24) and Shaheen Afridi (1/21) restricted the Canadians to 106/7 in 20 overs.

Pakistan lost the wicket of opener Saim Ayub early in a cautious start but both Muhammad Rizwan (53 not out) and Babar Azam (33) added 63 for the second wicket to take the team close to the target. Fakhar Zaman fell towards the end of the innings.

Mohammad Amir was declared Player of the Match.  

Rizwan joined India’s Rohit Sharma as only the openers to have got most scores of 50-plus in T20 Internationals. Both now have 30 such scores, with Rizwan getting them in 71 innings and Sharma getting them in 118 innings.

Canada skipper Zafar said after the match, “It was a bit disappointing. The wicket was difficult to bat on but the Pakistani bowlers bowled well. We were about 25-30 runs short. We needed to get some early wickets.”

Pakistan skipper Babar Azam said, “We needed this win. If you take wickets with the new ball, it always helps.”

Azam said that they did have the net run rate on the back of their mind.  

“We tried to take on the spinners,” he said.

Though they failed to get ahead of the United States of America, they must be a relieved unit to have got the win under their belt.

Pakistan, Cricket, ICC T20 World Cup, Babar, Amir, Rizwan