Phil Salt powers England to emphatic victory and levels the series with Pakistan.
Phil Salt powers England to emphatic victory and levels the series with Pakistan. In what is now the longest T20 series ever played between two international sides, the balance has once again tipped.
England swept India in the sixth match, winning eight wickets with 33 balls to spare.
This means the score is tied after three games. The outcome of Sunday’s game is critical.
The top English order clicked like a roulette pill landing on the winning number.
T20
Phil Salt, who had scored 71 runs in his previous eight Twenty20 innings for England, blasted 88 runs across the Gaddafi Stadium in a mere 41 balls.
It was a masterful at-bat, full of violent pulls, swinging cuts, and rocketing drives that zipped across the outfield so swiftly that the chasing fielders seemed to be moving at the speed of molasses in January.
England seemed to have doubled down on the risky strategy that cost them the game in the previous meeting when they lost chasing a lower total than the 169 Pakistan made this time. Moeen Ali once again flipped a coin and elected to field Pakistan.
Before yesterday night’s Friday game, Ali had been quite dissatisfied with the performance of his batting lineup.
Salt should have had a simple catch on the first pitch, but the ball went past the point fielder by a hair. He then unleashed a barrage of four strokes, three of which went down the ground for four and one flicked over fine leg for six.
Alex Hales struck a six off Shahnawaz Dahani and three four off Mohammad Wasim. Together they scored 50 runs in the first three overs of the innings before Hales was caught off the top-edge.
When pushed, Salt pushed himself even further. With 19 runs in the fifth and 20 in the seventh, Salt reached 50 off just 19 balls. Moeen and Liam Livingstone are the only Englishmen to have ever done it faster.
Score
Dawid Malan scored 26 runs off 18 balls before being bowled leg before wicket by a delivery scuffed along the ground.
Had the next man in, Ben Duckett, not batted so well himself, Salt could have broken Livingstone’s record for the fastest century for England. Duckett made 26 of the 42 runs England required when he came to the crease. To adapt to the changing nature of the game, Salt ultimately decided to focus on singles scoring.
Pakistan’s top two scorers and wicket-takers in the series, Mohammad Rizwan and Haris Rauf were both rested in favor of Mohammad Haris, 21, making his T20 debut, and Dahani’s return.
England had also made two changes, reintroducing Richard Gleeson and Reece Topley.
Due to Rizwan’s unavailability, the batting relied heavily on Babar Azam, who relied heavily on the England bowling. It took him 59 balls to get to 87, which is one less than Salt. However, with only five fours in his first 42 balls, he still managed an impeccable performance by scoring 36 runs off the last 17.
Azam hit his 3,000th run in Twenty20 internationals in the midst of it.
Players
Only four other men had done it before him, and he beat out three in the race. Like Virat Kohli, he needed 81 innings to do it. With sixes off Gleeson, David Willey, and Topley, Azam pushed the score closer to 4,000 in the penultimate over, which cost 19 runs.
Iftikhar Ahmed, whose grizzled appearance and improbable career have made him something of a cult legend, was a supporter of Azam’s.
Facts
Even though he has only scored one fifty and taken 12 wickets for Pakistan in 44 innings across all three forms, Iftikhar has managed to keep a firm grasp on his spot in the side.
He demonstrated some of what his team sees in him with a rollicking 31 off 21 balls, including two stunning sixes down the ground off Adil Rashid.
The second one was the longest at 106m and landed amid the Raja Enclosure. Next, he was nabbed in the middle of the field.
Rashid’s recent losing streak extended to two matches. On Wednesday night, he bowled four overs for 41 runs without taking a wicket.
On Thursday, he bowled four overs for 38 runs without taking a wicket. The English management team is probably hoping his floaty leg spin doesn’t work well on the Lahore pitches.
Since he has been England’s lone spinner on both occasions, Pakistan has made a point of going after him. As a result, England has struggled to slow the scoring in the middle of both innings. The way Salt was hitting, it didn’t matter anyway.
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