England win first T20I against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755
England won the first T20I against Pakistan at Cardiff by five wickets and with almost three overs to spare. England are now 1-0 up in the two-game series and there is one match still to be played at the same ground on Tuesday.
The T20I was played in a backdrop of the match-fixing controversy that hit the sport recently and as such had a lot of eyeballs focused on it. England won the toss and decided to field first, given there were good chances of a shower later, and the captain Paul Collingwood hasn’t had the best of times with the Duckworth-Lewis system.
Pakistan got off to a good start, as they took 12 runs off the very first over of the game, but Tim Bresnan stemmed the rot in the second over as he dismissed Kamran Akmal for six – caught by Michael Yardy.
Mohamamad Yousuf looked to be a totally different man with the bat as he went about his business of scoring the runs rather gracefully and quickly. In partnership with http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahzaib-Hasan-c2488, the Pakistani side brought up their 50 in the seventh over before Yousuf succumbed to the temptation of sweeping Graeme Swann to mid-wicket.
Rather surprisingly, the Pakistani innings lost momentum drastically after this, and barely managed to regain it again. Fawad Alam was beautifully tied down by the spinners and he managed only 20 off 29 balls, whereas despite a 30-ball 35 from Umar Akmal, the Pakistani side could manage to get only 126 in their 20 overs. What was probably more appalling was the fact that the side had lost only four wickets in the process.
England did not have a great start to their innings. They lost http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 onto the stumps and Luke Wright was bowled around his legs, England were 62/5 in ten overs.
The run rate was never a problem at this stage, but what was definitely an issue was the wickets that had fallen in a heap. It took a valiant 38 off 24 balls from Eoin Morgan and a nice supporting hand of 35 by Yardy to take the side home. The pair added 57 off six overs, and took 30 off Saeed Ajmal’s three overs to seal the win.
Yardy’s 1/21 off four overs and the unbeaten match-winning innings won him the man of the match.
Tags: