All-round http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758
‘Boom Boom’ was the crowd chanting after Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi decimated the Sri Lankan team during the fourth One Day International (ODI) of the five match series at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium in the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/United-Arab-Emirates-c3033 (UAE) on Sunday, November 20,
2011.
The veteran all-rounder took the game away from Sri Lanka, as he scored a brilliant half-century and took five wickets, earning the man of the match award.
Yesterday’s match will be remembered as Afridi v Sri Lanka, as the aggressive Pathan won the game single-handedly.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mohammad-Hafeez-c76898.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Misbah-ul-Haq-c1972, the Pakistani skipper, opted to bat first after winning the toss. The pitch was dry and was expected to assist the spinners, but the team batting first would have liked to score at least 250 runs.
However, the Men in Green struggled to cope up with the conditions and kept on losing wickets at regular intervals.
Opener http://www.senore.com/Cricket/KC-Sangakkara-c1779, who took a brilliant catch.
The innings was stabilized by Hafeez and first-drop http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Younis-Khan-c98325, as the pair put on 39 runs for the second wicket.
However, both batsmen fell in the bowling power-play, leaving the team in a spot of bother. The former got caught in the deep after scoring 27 runs whereas Younis failed to pick a slower delivery from http://www.senore.com/Cricket/CRD-Fernando-c1292 and gave a simple catch to the fielder
at short cover Jeevan Mendis.
The fall of two quick wickets brought Misbah and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shoaib-Malik-c90088 at the crease. The latter was making a comeback to the side and proved why he was not given a chance in the previous games.
Malik was only looking to play for himself rather than the team and scored just two runs off 22 balls before being caught plumb in front of the stumps. He was pretty keen on wasting the review, but was finally convinced by the skipper to walk away.
Things kept on getting worse for the team, as http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Umar-Akmal-c94595 got out for two and Misbah ran himself out on 16.
Wicketkeeper batsman http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sarfraz-Ahmed-c88818 was dismissed for 10, leaving his side at 120/7. Afridi was the only recognised batsman left in the middle and needed a special innings to rescue Pakistan from chaos.
The veteran all-rounder used all his experience and guided the team to a fighting total of 200. He smashed 75 runs off 65 balls with the help of four fours and three sixes on a pitch where other batsmen were even struggling to take ones and twos.
Sri Lanka came out to bat with a positive intent, but lost three wickets for 53 runs. However, their most dependable pair of Sangakkara and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/DPMD-Jayawardene-c1397 almost won the match with a spectacular 102-run partnership for the fourth wicket.
They probably misjudged Afridi’s skills as a bowler, as the former tried to attack him in order to finish off things quickly.
Afridi was too good for the left-handed batsman and went through his defences to clean him up in the 38th over.
After that, there was no stopping the 31-year-old, who devastated the opposition’s lower-order with a splendid spell of bowling.
Sri Lanka were all out for 174 runs, as Afridi became the first player in limited-over cricket history to take five wickets and score more than fifty runs in one innings twice.
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