Pakistan vs South Africa in 2^nd One Day

Yesterday Pakistan has played such a beautiful game that South Africa has been very well outplayed very much convincingly in almost each and every aspect whether batting or both.

South Africa won the toss when the two teams met at Super Sport Park, Centurion and AB De Villers opted to bat first and since it has already defeated us in test and 1^st One Day he may have thought that his batsmen duly supported by home crowd will put up a big score and thus put Pakistan under severe pressure to score as much to win the match. HM Amla and GC Smith who are certified good openers came to the crease to open the innings and Amla who had hit 3 boundaries while scored 17 runs when he was caught by wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal at the bowling of Mohammad Irafn and team scores was 26. CN Ingram was the 3^rd batsman to bat but as the good luck had for Irfan and bad for him poor Ingram was caught behind by Kamran Akmal while Irfan was bowler. This was really very much shocking for the host to lose two seasoned batsmen at just low score as 26. From this point of time Pakistani bowlers did not give any space for sufficient breathing and they were in very pathetic condition since their 5 batsmen had gone back to pavilion at the score of just 62 runs. However, F Behardine played very dominating role in rescuing his team. He scored 58 runs which is the highest score after facing 123 balls at the average of 70.73 while RJ Peterson became the second highest scorer as he netted 44 runs from 88 balls averaging 65.67. The whole team scored 191 which include 19 extra runs as well which in other words mean that South Africans scored 172 runs and not 191 to be honest. Irfan had been the most successful bowler who has broken the backbone of their fanciful batting line up and sent back 4 top batsmen including the skipper AB De Villiers hence the hosts simply could not come back into the game. Junaid, Saeed Ajmal and Hafeez were the other bowlers who took two wickets each. It must be mentioned that most of the time throughout the inning South Africans kept the score at 5 runs per average which is a commendable effort in any case to be honest.

Unluckily the game was stopped for a while because it rained while South Africans were batting. However, when the game restarted it was reduced to 44 overs instead of 50 overs. Pakistan was given a target of 192 runs which it very easily scored in just 39.2 overs only and that too after losing just 4 batsmen and not 10 as had been the case with our opponents. Nasir Jamshed and Mohammad Hafeez opened our innings and when our score was 29 runs only opener Nasir Jamshed was caught by Smith and bowled by Mclaren and we were in a bit trouble since our seasoned batsmen (Nasir, Hafeez, Kamran) were back to the dressing room while our score was just 69 runs but then former skipper Younus Khan came in and he infused new blood in our innings which was very much needed at that point in any case otherwise we had been again doomed. Younus has added very valuable 32 runs and when our total score was 115 runs he was brilliantly caught by Amla and such prized wicket was claimed by Peterson. Now Misbahul Haq who is the present captain was paired with former captain Shoaib Malik and they both really steered us not to just safety but to success. Misbah who had always been blamed to be shy and defensive really came out of his cell and played real captain innings. Misbah hit 3 mighty sixers duly punctuated with 3 boundaries in his total score of 57 runs while very much surprisingly Shoaib Malik hit 4 boundaries in one over which changed the very complex of the game and put us on the success track. He hit a real hot six also but after many long years gap in between as it was Australia when he hit earlier six. If we compare and total boundaries scored by South Africa and Pakistan it is found out that South African batsmen has scored 17 boundaries without any six while on our side we hit 16 boundaries and as many as 5 sixes which is not a joke in any case.

Heartiest congratulations on such a convincing victory and I am joined by my nation praying that Pakistan must clinch One Day series, inshaallah.

Iqbal Hadi Zaidi / Kuwait