Sports Desk
DUBAI: A crucial catch of Asif Ali, dropped by Indian Cricket team’s Sikh player Arshdeep Singh, which is being termed as Patiala Drop on social media, helped Pakistan trash India in an important encounter of the ongoing Asia Cup here on Sunday evening.
Set a target of a more than sizable 182, Pakistan lost its Captain Babar Azam early and Fakhar Zaman couldn’t do much either. With both men back in the dugout and the chase going awry, Babar played the masterstroke of promoting Mohammad Nawaz up the order.
Nawaz and Rizwan formed a crucial 73-run partnership for the third wicket that brought Pakistan back in the game. Nawaz’s boundary-laded 42 off 20 was pivotal as it helped Pakistan keep the required run rate in check.
That said, the importance of Rizwan’s 71 off 51 cannot be understated. But the diminutive keeper-batter couldn’t finish and it needed late cameos from Khushdil Shah (14* off 11) and Asif Ali (16 off 8) for Pakistan to seal the match.
Earlier, the Green Shirts had a great start to the evening as they won the battle of coin flips but everything went south for them for a while after that.
Indian openers KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma set the tone for the night with a blistering 28 (each) a laid a foundation on which Virat Kohli, well and truly back in form, capitalised to help India post 181 for 7.
Pakistan recovered well from a horrible start to restrict India to 181 for 7. Pace, which had been pretty effective for Pakistan last Sunday, was completely subdued by Indian openers Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul (28 each), who came out all guns blazing and gave India a flying start. The foundation laid by the top two had India eyeing a total in excess of 200 at one point but the introduction of spin curtailed the flow of runs.
Shadab Khan and Mohammad Nawaz were excellent again and helped Pakistan negate some of the damage caused by the pacers. Virat Kohli, well and truly back in form, top scored with a 60 but did not quite get the late fireworks from the other end. Following Pakistan’s recovery in the second half of the innings, Pakistan could have held India to an even lower total, if not for a horrible sequence of misfielding in the final over courtesy Fakhar Zaman.
Mohammad Nawaz was magical with his bat as he played a crucial knock for Pakistan while chasing the 182-run target against India in the Super Four stage match in the ongoing T20 Asia Cup 2022.
Nawaz kept calm and scored his T20I career-best of 42 off 20 balls, laced with six boundaries and two maximums.
With this scintillating knock, Nawaz won millions of hearts on Twitter as fans praised him for his explosive knock.
