Spain's Yasir Ali joins exclusive club

Spain off-spinner Yasir Ali became the 19th bowler in T20 International history to take six wickets in a game as he returned with figures of 6/28 to help his team beat Croatia in the first game of a bilateral series in Zagreb.

Yasir, who was born in Pakistan province of Punjab, also scored 41 as the Spanish team coasted to a four-wicket victory in 15.5 overs.

Syazrul Idrus of Malaysia is the only bowler to take a seven-wicket haul in T20Is. He did that against China last year.

Ajantha Mendis (Sri Lanka) twice, Deepak Chahar (India), Mustafizur Rahman (Bangladesh), Obaid McCoy (West Indies), and Yuzvendra Chahal (India) are the only players from Test nations to take six wickets in a game.

Peter Aho (Nigeria), Dinesh Nakrani (Uganda), Moazzam Baig (Malawi), JJ Smit (Namibia), Abinash Bohara (Nepal), Nasrulla Rana (Hong Kong), Pratik Singh Bais (Mexico), Peter Langat (Kenya), Hernan Fennell (Argentina), Dawood Ahmedzai (France), Jan Frylinck (Namibia), and Reo Sukarno-Thomas (Japan) are the other bowlers from Associate countries besides Yasir Ali to take six wickets in a T20I innings.

In the match played on Friday, August 2, Croatia scored 125/9 in 20 overs with one-drop batsman Saghar Manzoor scoring 38. Yasir kept picking wickets regularly.

In response, Spain started aggressively but lost a wicket early.

But Yasir stitched partnerships with other batsmen and by the time he was out as the sixth wicket, Spain were just 11 runs short of Croatia’s total.

Associate cricket, Spain, ICC, Croatia