——- Australia beat Scotland, send England into Super Eight
Sports Desk
LAUDERHILL: Pakistan ended their T20 World Cup campaign with victory against Ireland in their last match of T20 World Cup 2024, played Sunday at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium in Lauderhill, Florida.
The Irish struggled during Green Shirts’ run-chase but made inroads by picking up quick wickets later in the innings. However, Babar Azam and Co chased down the small 107-run target against the opponents, who re-mained winless at the mega-tournament.
The low-scoring encounter was decided in the second last over with Shaheen Afridi taking Pakistan over the line and helping them end their disappointing T20 World Cup campaign with a six. Chasing the target, Pakistan, despite a decent start, made things difficult for them as they kept on los-ing wickets. Saim Ayub (17 off 17), and Mohammad Rizwan (17 off 16) lost their wickets inside the first six overs.
Pakistan’s middle-order failed once again as Fakhar Zaman (5), Usman Khan (2), Shadab Khan (0) and Imad Wasim (4) all failed to score in double digits.
Abbas Afridi gave Pakistan a breakthrough as he hit a six and a four during his 17-run innings which helped Babar Azam’s side come close to the target.
Skipper Babar Azam top-scored for the winning side with 32 runs.
Earlier in the first innings, a dominating display by the Pakistani bowlers ran over the Irish side as Sha-heen, Mohammad Amir, and Wasim all starred with the ball.
Shaheen started the innings for Pakistan brilliantly as he removed Andrew Balbirnie and Lorcan Tucker in the first over, leaving Ireland 2-2.
Amir continued what Shaheen started and sent Irish skipper Paul Stirling back to the pavilion for just one run.
Pakistani bowlers continued their dominance and kept sending the opponents’ batters back to the pavilion. It looked like Ireland would be all out before even scoring 60 runs as a team but George Dockrell and Gareth Delany’s 44-run partnership helped them reach a decent total.
Delany top-scored for the struggling Irish side with his quick 19-ball 31 which included four boundaries. Joshua Little’s contributed 22 runs on 18 balls with three boundaries.
Ireland concluded their innings at 106/9 in 20 overs. For Pakistan, Shaheen and Imad bagged three wickets each, Amir got two while Haris Rauf managed to remove one Irish batter.
However, the victory made no difference as it was a dead-rubber match after elimination of both sides.
Earlier, Australia secured a five-wicket victory over Scotland in St Lucia on Saturday that sent the Scots home from the T20 World Cup and defending champions England through to the Super Eight stage.
After England’s rain-disrupted victory over Namibia in Antigua earlier in the day, Scotland needed a draw, a washout or a first ever win over Australia to progress from Group B at the expense of their southern neighbours.
Clear skies at Gros Islet meant the Scots would be reliant on their cricketing skills and they made a good fist of it with 180-5 from their 20 overs highlighted by a quickfire 60 from Brandon McMullen and 42 not out from skipper Richie Berrington.
Australia, who had already booked their spot in the second round, will have been disappointed with their fielding and the start of their innings but Travis Head (68) and Marcus Stoinis (59) accelerated in the last 10 overs to help get them across the line.
“Scotland are a really good outfit, they took it down to the wire and it was a good chase in the end,” said Australia captain Mitchell Marsh.
“The World Cup kind of starts again now, we’re excited about what’s to come.”
Berrington, whose team depart because they had a lower net run rate than England, said the Scots were disappointed that they had not driven home their advantage.
“I thought we were in a pretty good position,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t execute for long enough. I think the guys can hold their heads high in re-gards to how they’ve played their cricket throughout the tournament.”
Australia won the toss and elected to field first but after Ashton Agar had bowled opener Michael Jones in the first over, George Munsey and McMullen put together a partnership of 89 for the second wicket to lay a solid platform for Scotland.
Munsey holed out to midwicket for 35 off the bowling of Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa finally win-kled out McMullen, who clubbed two sixes and six fours before Mitchell Starc sent him back with a diving catch.
Berrington took up the mantle but the Scots would have been disappointed to score only 42 runs in their final five overs as the Australian bowlers tightened the screws to make up for a fielding effort that had seen a flurry of dropped catches.
The Scots took some momentum into the Australian innings, however, and David Warner (1), Marsh (8) and Maxwell (11) were removed cheaply, the latter bowled by a peach of a delivery from left-arm spinner Mark Watt.
Opener Travis Head, however, was warming to the task and Marcus Stoinis joined in him a partnership of 80 for the third wicket that turned the tide.
Head decisively clubbed three sixes off successive legal deliveries from Safyaan Sharif soon and alt-hough the Scottish seamer immediately ended his innings, the Australians had the scent of victory in their nostrils.
Watt returned to remove Stoinis in the following over but Tim David and Matthew Wade got Australia across the line to silence the conspiracy theorists suggesting Australia would try to lose to remove Eng-land from the tournament.
