Australia 118 for 3 (Stoinis 61*, Inglis 27, Afridi 1-14) won Pakistan 117 all out (Babar 41, Hardie 3-21, Zampa 2-11) for 7 wickets
Pakistan’s bright start
Pakistan came out with a clear intent after having shown very little in trying to chase down Australia in the previous match. Sahibzada Farhan fell early, but what Pakistan were trying to do was obvious: take advantage of the Powerplay. Even Babar, who usually starts slowly, found the limit on the first ball and continued in that vein. Haseebullah Khan was riding his luck a bit, his edges found the boundary, but that too was a product of a strong flash. The result was Pakistan racing to 58, their highest powerplay score in an innings against Australia.
Zampa’s witchcraft
Zampa’s impeccable control and skill make him nothing short of a sorcerer in this format. For Pakistan, today, he was also their tormentor – toying with the batsmen at will while varying the pace, line and variations, keeping the batsmen in doubt all the time.
It took just five balls before he ensured Haseebullah’s luck ran out, and the flash outside off stump found a short third. In his third over, he put an end to Babar’s entertaining knock, adjusting the flight of his delivery as he saw the batsman run down the wicket and clear his stumps.
Even when he wasn’t taking wickets, he was piling on the pressure at the other end. Pakistan’s stand-in captain Salman Ali Agha played five points against him before Aaron Hardie put him out of his misery in the next over, and his figures of 4-0-11-2 did not flatter him even remotely.
Pakistan’s balance
It’s hard to expect batsmen to play high-risk cricket when you simply don’t have enough batsmen. Pakistan had clearly informed the team that they expected aggression from the beginning, even from players for whom it does not come naturally. Usman Khan tends to take a few balls before he can bowl, but he came out of the first ball looking to put in effort, even when the shot was never effective. He never looked sustainable, as was demonstrated when he holed out on his fourth delivery, leading to Pakistan’s collapse.
Each fall of the wicket was even more worrying for the visitors due to the extreme length of his tail; They effectively ran out of batsmen when the fifth wicket fell, with Abbas Afridi coming out at number 7. It also proved to be a problem for them in the second game, and remains a problem they must find a way to solve.
Australia finally gets ahead of Haris
A recurring theme in this series is that Haris Rauf goes out and dominates any Australian batsman he finds at the other end. This has been especially true in the case of Glenn Maxwell, but Stoinis said that after the game he told Haris that this was the only time “one of us” got Haris’ number.
And Stoinis did it in a fascinating way. At the end of the eighth over, Australia were 57 for 2 and Pakistan still believed they had time to put the game in danger. But the ninth over saw him beat Haris for two fours and two sixes in the first four balls, with the last six flying off Bellerive Oval completely. A phase of play began in which Stoinis plundered 45 off his next 12 deliveries, including a 25-run knock off Shaheen Afridi. In the next over, Abbas had caught Stoinis at deep square leg, but he had overstepped. Sixty-one runs emerged from the last 21 balls to bring the curtain down on the match and the series.
Danyal Rasool is Pakistan correspondent for Pak Gazette. @danny61000
