England beat Pakistan by four wickets
Before he led Pakistan to victory over England in the 1992 World Cup final in Melbourne Imran Khan famously implored his team to “fight like wounded tigers.”
Whether http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482, the current one-day captain of Pakistan, is capable of quite the same level of rhetoric is debatable but at least he has stopped his side looking like paper tigers.
Pakistan may have gone 2-0 down after the second NatWest Series match against England at Headingley, but it was a vast improvement on the two Twenty20 matches where Pakistan were so abject. Having taken England close enough in the first one-day international on Friday, which they lost by 24 runs, Pakistan – having won the toss- set their stall out from the start.
Pakistan's total of 294-8 owed much to half-centuries from Kamran Akmal (74) and Asad Shafiq (50), while Stuart Broad finished with four wickets but only after his bowling had been plundered for 81 runs, which was not helped by some ordinary outfield play by England.
Many of those runs came as Akmal played the lead role in an opening stand of 122 in less than 23 overs with Mohammad Hafeez. Then http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shafiq-c89281 - in only his third one-day international - put on 74 in 13 overs with Mohammad Yousuf for the third wicket.
England set about their reply with Steve Davies seeking to build on the impressive 87 that he had scored at Chester-le-Street two days previously, until he nicked faint edge behind to Akaml off the bowling of Shoaib Akhtar for 26.
There is a body of thinking that questions whether Andrew Strauss is worth his place in the England team in the 50-over format. Well, if the captain is aware of that he delivered an emphatic answer. He was given a life when dropped by Mohammad Irfan, fielding at short fine-leg, off the bowling of Akhtar. Strauss had scored just 23 but then set about the Pakistan bowling, ably assisted initially by Jonathan Trott.
The pair took the score to 189 before Trott was run out for 53, after which England traded runs for wickets. Paul Collingwood (19) and Eion Morgan (16) failed to make the telling contribution and between their dismissals Strauss finally fell - lbw to Saeed Ajmal -for 126, which left Ravi Bopara and Michael Yardy to close out the match as the innings entered the 48th over.
Bopara and Yardy tried to take on Umar Gul and they scored 11, leaving England needing 13 runs from the final two overs. The first ball of the 49th over saw Bopara sky one for Hafeez to catch to bring Tim Bresnan to the crease who then hit Ajamal for a boundary, leaving England needing six runs from the final over which was slightly delayed as Afridi held and impromptu team meeting before Gul took the ball.
The first ball to Bresnan was straight and full but the second a wide which nullified the dot ball, which had Afridi talking to his bowler. It did not work because the next was a short ball which was edged by Bresnan over the wicketkeeper for a boundary. The pressure was off and the next ball claimed the victory after the batsmen scampered for a single where the chance of a run out was missed.
England won with three balls to spare – as they moved to second in the ICC rankings – and underlined their progress. But it was also a world away from http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755’s tame efforts in the Twenty20 matches in Cardiff just days before. It seems that they are slowly coming back to form after the furore of the spot-fixing allegations that had seemingly sapped their morale in the past fortnight.
They now go into the third game of the five-match series, at the Oval on Friday looking as though the can still gain something from the series.
Now who would have bet on that a week ago?
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