Captaincy favors Afridi

August 13, 2009

Captaincy favors Afridi

After loosing the Test and the ODI series, luck has turned in favor of the visitors. They have not only won the last two ODI’s but also beaten the host in style in the last T20 game. Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka in the only T20 game of the tour with a 52 runs. Last time the two countries had played a T20 match was in the final of the T20 world cup, and the results again went in favor of Pakistan.

Shahid Afridi was the reason for the Lankan loss, he scored a brilliant half century, bowled a very tight spell taking one wicket and then a run out to send back Kapugedera to the pavilion. Pakistan was excellent in all the departments of the game. There were some excellent batting performances by Imran Nazir, Umar Akmal and Abdul Razzaq scoring 40, 30 and 25 runs respectively. Although it was not the perfect start what visitors would have expected as opening batsman Kamran Akmal was bowled out on the very first delivery of the match. Pakistan quickly recovered for the early loss and compiled a challenging target of 172 runs with the loss of 5 wickets in there required 20 overs at a run rate of 8.60 runs per over. The Pakistani approach to batting was simple, hitting boundaries at regular intervals and that is what they precisely did.

Sri Lankan chase started in a good was and as expected Jayasuriya came out firing in his true style. First to go back to the pavilion was Udawatte on the fifth delivery of the third over and just two balls after that Jayasuriya was out as he tried to pull a delivery which turned much quicker then his expectation. Jayawardene and Sangakkara tried to get the chase back on track but Jayawardene gave a leading edge to Razzaq of the bowling of Iftikhar Anjum. The last hopes for a Lankan victory were over when Sangakkara was bowled by Saeed Ajmal. Sri Lanka was bowled out in 18.1 over’s and could just score 120 runs, still short by 52 runs.

Shahid Afridi was declared man of the match. One can just say in the end – Pakistan is one team that has a habit of throwing surprises.