AUCKLAND (New Zealand) Jan 12 : Pakistan lost its first one day T 20 match against New Zealand on Friday. New Zealand batted first and scored 227 runs in 20 overs. For New Zealand Daryal Mitchel scored 61 runs of 27 balls only. New Zealand caption played a caption inning for his team and scored 57 runs of 42 balls. Fin Allen scored 34 runs of 15 balls. Haris Rauf remained successful bowler for Pakistan. He bowled out 2 New Zealand batter in his fixed quota of 4 over for 34 runs.
Pakistan started its inning and had a solid start and till half of the inning it was well poised to meet the target of 227 runs. In particular, Saim Ayub’s impressive knock had set a ground for Pakistan team to win the first T20 match against New Zealand. Babar Azam scored 57 runs of 35 runs. Mohammad Rizwan scored 25 runs of 14 balls. Tim Southee took four wickets and gave away only 25 runs. Ben Sears bowled out 2 Pakistani batters for 42 runs. Adam Milne also took two wickets.
However, after Iftikhar Ahmad’s fall of wicket Pakistan’s batting line scrambled and entire team got out after scoring 180 runs. Pakistan’s poor performance in all sides of the games including batting, fielding and bowling put New Zealand in command in the first T 20 game against Pakistan.
Caption Shaheen Afridi did not make any run and retried to the pavilion. Other Pakistan bats including Mir and Azam also remained almost non-starter against New Zealand. Pakistan’s lost to New Zealand in T20 will make its trajectory in the ICC ranking downward.
Pakistan had lost a test series against Australia prior to leaving for a tour to New Zealand. Babar Azam played a solid inning and took Pakistan’s score to a reasonable level. However , almost half of Pakistan’s team could not make any score to justify their inclusion in the national cricket team.
