Pakistan beat England at Lord's to make it 2-2
Pakistan beat England in the fourth ODI at Lord’s to tie the series at two games all on Monday. Pakistan won by 38 runs in a game where fortunes swung right throughout.
Pakistan won the toss on a dry pitch and decided to bat first. All three games in the series have been won by the teams batting first as well, and so it made perfect sense. The Pakistani innings started off
well with a partnership of 62 for the first wicket, but once Graeme Swann came into the attack, it became more and more difficult for the batsmen to score.
The Pakistan side began to lose wickets at regular intervals as Swann got the ball to turn viciously and they slumped to 155/5 in the 38th over. With not too much batting to come, it looked like a score of
220 was all what Pakistan would have got, but Abdul Razzaq then joined in the party with a 20-ball 44 in the batting powerplay.
In the end, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 scored 265/7 in the 50 overs, a very healthy total. Swann ended with four wickets.
The target did not deter the English openers too much as Andrew Strauss and Steven Davies added 113 for the opening wickets off only 20 overs. From this score, the English team should have easily pressed
on for a win, but the wicket of Davies led to a middle-order collapse. None of the other batsmen reached 30 as Umar Gul continued his wicket-taking ability and scalped four more to go with his six from the previous game.
The English side fell 38 runs short and were bowled out in the 47th over. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Razzaq-c84421 won the man of the match award.
The game, however, was marred by an incident just prior to the start when the English batsman Jonathan Trott and the Pakistani substitute Wahab Riaz were involved in a tempestuous exchange of words. Things
came to such head that there was a buzz that the toss may be delayed because of that, but in the end the toss happened at the scheduled time.
Earlier, the match-fixing issue began to boil over when the Pakistan Cricket Board chief, Ejaz Butt had claimed that he had proof of the involvement of the English cricketers’ involvement in match-fixing.
Later he denied that he had made any such statement and said that he was merely repeating what he had heard the bookies had said. The English cricket board had then got into a huddle with the English captain and coach and decided to issue a statement that
while the series will go on as planned, the board may decide to sue Butt for his comments.
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