This World Cup match report has been a rather disappointing one when it comes to weather conditions throughout the duration of the tournaments and a naïve decision on part of ICC for making a call. This has led to quite a few matches ending with a point a piece for each teams due to showers the entire day. Pakistan itself has seen a match being cancelled because of such circumstances. This could possibly lead to a blow to the qualification expectations of a lot of teams in the later stages of the competition when it gets tougher. Similar situations were expected in Pakistan’s encounter with Australia with a 50% probability of rain, however, the play was continued without any interruptions.
To start off, Pakistan won the toss and elected to bowl first. The Australian openers, who just couldn’t find their rhythm against India, got off to a blistering start helped on by poor fielding and catches dropped and manage to put a lot of runs on the board, with Pakistani bowlers not being able to make a breakthrough. The decision to play 4 fast bowlers was a good one from the captain with the pitch doing little to help the spinners. Regardless, Australia were in prime position closing on 250 in just 35 overs when Aamir decided to enter beast mode. This led to a downfall of the Australian batting order to 307 only, with Aamir getting a career best of 5-30 and brought back Pakistan into the game.
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Enter the Pakistani batsmen. Not for long though, since 2 runs on the board and Fakhar Zaman got caught with a poorly executed shot and the pressure got back on Pakistan. This was managed well by the following batsmen, Babar Azam, who played some exquisite shots and exploited to the powerplay restrictions to the full and was able to establish a good partnership with Imam ul Haq. That didn’t stand long and Babar was also shown the way to the pavilion. What followed was a slowing down of Pakistan’s game, a complain that has been quite prominent in Imam’s game especially. What followed was a period of disappointment for Pakistan, with the experienced Shoaib Malik not even putting a single run on the board before being caught behind. Hafeez, who played a good innings also found himself caught on the boundary from a loose ball by Finch. Pakistan had to recover from this temperory collapse and so it did with Wahab and Hassan playing quickfire innings to bring Pakistan back into the game, until a disappointing end to a match that was in Pakistan’s hands all along, but with a lack of consistency in batting and slowing down the game costing them points. Pakistan face India next, which would be the game of the tournament for sure, with everyone expected to be at their best!
