http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 versus New Zealand Twenty20
recap; Pakistan ends the year with a win
Pakistan finally won a Twenty20 match against New Zealand by a big margin of 103 runs. New Zealand had already won the series by winning the first two matches.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 won the toss and elected to bat first. Ahmed Shehzad was given an opportunity to open the innings as Afridi decided to move down the order. Shehzad along with Mohammad Hafeez started the innings positively for Pakistan. The openers gave a solid
start to the Pakistani team. The pair gave an 81 run opening partnership to the team before Hafeez got out scoring 34 runs. From 81 for no wicket, Pakistan lost the momentum and were 106 for four, losing both the openers, Younis Khan and Asad Shafiq. Umar
Akmal and Afridi joined for a 30 run stand for Pakistan and took the score to 136. Just when Afridi was looking set, he lost his wicket and this brought Abdul http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Razzaq-c84421 in the middle.
Although Umar played well for his 30, it was Razzaq who stole the show. The veteran all-rounder smashed the bowlers to all parts of the ground. He was given a life when he was dropped by Nathan McCullum earlier in his innings but after that all his catches
were taken by the spectators. Razzaq smashed 34 runs off just 14 balls. He smashed three mighty sixes and three fours in his innings. The top scorer for Pakistan was Shehzad who scored his maiden Twenty20 fifty. He scored 54 runs off 34 balls. All the Kiwi
bowlers were hammered for runs apart from James Franklin. He grabbed two wickets for just 12 runs in his three overs. Apart from him all the other bowlers gave away too many runs which allowed Pakistan to reach 183 runs.
Things didn’t turn out to be as good as the Kiwi team would have expected, when they came out to bat. The top four batsmen were out without adding any run. Five batsmen were dismissed when the total was just 11. Only Scott Styris looked positive and scored
45 runs. He was the only batsman to reach double figures and the dismal batting show for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 saw them all out for just 80 runs. The Pakistani bowlers didn’t give away anything in today’s match. Razzaq carried his good batting form, to his bowling.
He grabbed three wickets in his spell and Afridi wrapped up the Kiwi innings by taking four wickets.
Both teams will be playing a Test series after the Twenty20’s. The first of the two matches will start from 7th January. The Test series will be followed by six ODI’s (One Day Internationals).
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