Abdul Razzaq shines as Pakistan post a mammoth total
Rampant http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 to end the T20 series on a high note for Pakistan.
Pakistan won the toss and elected to field first. Captain http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 decided to bat down the order giving Ahmed Shehzad an opportunity to open the innings and Shehzad along with Mohammad Hafeez started the innings positively for Pakistan.
Both the openers attacked the Kiwi bowlers and smashed boundaries to all parts of the ground. The pair gave an 81 run opening partnership to the team before Hafeez got out scoring 34 runs.
Shehzad, Younis Khan and Asad Shafiq followed Hafeez soon after and Pakistan once again collapsed in the mid way of the innings. At one stage, Pakistan were 106 for four when Umar Akmal was joined by captain Afridi.
Umar and Afridi gave a 30 run partnership to Pakistan and took the score to 136. Just when Afridi was looking set, he lost his wicket and this brought Abdul Razzaq in the middle.
Although Umar scored a good 30 before getting out, it was Razzaq who stole the show in the end. The veteran all-rounder smashed the ball to every corner of the ground. He was dropped by Nathan McCullum earlier in his innings but after that all his catches
were taken by the spectators.
With three sixes and the same number of fours, Razzaq smashed 34 runs off just 14 balls. The top scorer for Pakistan was Shehzad who scored his maiden Twenty20 fifty. He scored 54 runs off 34 balls, although he would be feeling a bit unlucky to have been
outshined by Razzaq's blistering knock.
The New Zealand bowlers didn’t have many answers to the extraordinary batting show by http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755. All the bowlers were smashed for runs apart from James Franklin. He bowled three overs and got two Pakistani batsmen out for 12 runs.
Surprisingly, Franklin was not given all of his four overs and the last over was given to the young Adam Milne who went for 48 runs in his allotted four overs.
New Zealand has batted well in the last two matches and will look forward to chase this total down. Pakistan rested Umar Gul and shoaib Akhtar and will rely on the spinners to restrict New Zealand below 183.
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