Former India captain Anil Kumble was mighty impressed with Pakistan’s great allround display in the T20 World Cup semifinal win over New Zealand on Wednesday at the SCG. He lauded Babar Azam & company for their comprehensive performance, including outdoing the Kiwis in the field in a “rare” occurrence.
Pakistan certainly were at their very best with the ball and bat in keeping New Zealand down to 152/4 and chasing it down with their seven wickets intact. But one stand-out feature about the win in the high-pressure knock-out fixture was their fielding, especially the brilliance of allrounder Shadab Khan.
The player made a number of important saves and inflicted a run-out of Devon Conway from mid-on, which proved to be of critical influence on the match since the Kiwi left-hander is a strong player of spin and may have targetted the Pakistani tweakers in the middle overs.
In his absence, the collective six overs of Shadab and his spin partner Mohammad Nawaz went for only 7.5 runs an over on a dry surface where perhaps New Zealand felt 15-20 runs short of putting Pakistan’s batting line-up under real pressure.
“The best part of today was yes, Pakistan definitely out-bowled New Zealand, they out-batted New Zealand, but most importantly they out-fielded New Zealand, which is very, very rare,”
Kumble said on ESPNcricinfo’s T20 Time Out show.
Meanwhile, Kumble’s co-panellist, former Australia allrounder Tom Moody made it a point to highlight a diving save at mid-on from Shadab off Kane Williamson’s well-timed stroke. The save denied the skipper an early boundary, which may have gotten him feeling good about his stay. Eventually, Williamson could only snail-walk his way to a match-losing 46 off 42 balls.
“The tone for me was set with one piece of fielding. And it’s not the run-out. It’s before the run-out [of Devon Conway]. It was by Shadab [Khan], who was at mid-on, dived and stopped the ball from going for four,”
Moody said.
“Kane Williamson played a beautiful on-drive, a straight on-drive, and he [Shadab] saved two runs. And that to me set the tone for the way they were going to operate at a team. You talk about body language but you need moments like that to lift the unit and that’s the standard that he basically said ‘this is the standard we are going to set today.”
On the night of the big semifinal, Pakistan also had their pivotal opening pair of Azam and Mohammad Rizwan regaining their best touch. The duo smashed their way to individual scores of 53 off 42 and 57 off 43 and stitched an opening stand of 105 runs which basically made it a no-contest.
After their separation, in walked No.3 Mohammad Haris and blazed his way to 30 off 26 in a knock that sealed any possible doors on the opposition. For Kumble, the arrival of Haris in the line-up – going at a strike-rate of 161.81 in the tournament since replacing Fakhar Zaman – has been a game-changer for Pakistan.
The young right-hander takes on the bowling from the word go and has infused greater powerhitting abilities into a Pakistan middle-order that has risen to the task at this T20 World Cup when the Babar-Rizwan duo have mostly struggled.
Pakistan now await the result of the second semifinal between India and England at the Adelaide Oval on Thursday for their finale clash at MCG on November 13, eyeing their second T20 World Cup title after tasting the triumph back in 2009 in England.
