Not so soon to Quarterfinals…
Pakistan v/s South Africa
By Disha Mashelkar
South Africa faced
Pakistan today at Auckland, New Zealand where the Proteas managed to win the
toss but not the match!
When the two greens (SA
and PAK jersey colour is green) had come on the field, probably everyone had
anticipated that South Africa will have a smoothly finishing win and will
become the second team from Pool B to reach the quarterfinals. Pakistan’s
Boom-boom man Shahid Afridi after a long time, started hitting all over the
field and somehow managed to take his team’s score to 222 runs in46.4 overs
(all out) when the rains took over and the match was reduced to 47 overs. Captain
Misbah-Ul-Haq hit a half century and as usual his contribution was valuable to
the team.
Nobody must have
expected that South Africa will lose all their wickets and thereby lose the
match at the score of 202 runs in 33.3 overs! Surprisingly AB Deviller’s
struggle of 77 runs went in vain when the captain finally got out to bowler Sohail
Khan. Pakistan’s Wahab Riaz took 3 wickets and helped to boost the chances of
Pakistan’s victory. Waves of happiness have now conquered the hearts of
Pakistani fans as they now have a reason to cheer up after their teams poor
beginning in this time’s Cricket World Cup (CWC).
Pakistan had last
played South Africa in a World Cup in 1999. They met after 15 years to post
their 1st win versus the Proteas in 4 games.
This match also showed
that winning the toss does not always lead to winning the match. And in the
chaos of scoring 300 plus target isn’t always necessary to score a victory. Sarfaraz Ahmed (wicketkeeper who got run-out) of Pakistan
became Man of The Match for scoring a splendid 49 runs in 49 balls who smashed
3 huge sixes and 5 boundaries.
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