The Pakistan cricket team and its passionate fans were made to endure a bitter pill of defeat on Thursday night. A spirited batting effort from Matthew Wade (41* off 17) and Marcus Stoinis (40* off 31) put an end to the men-in-green’s WT20 2021 campaign.
Pakistan crash out of the 2021 World Cup
If last night’s New Zealand-England semi-final clash was a humdinger. what fans witnessed at the Dubai Stadium on Thursday night was a daylight robbery of epic proportions. Batting first, Pakistan put up 176/4 on board, thanks to a stellar performance from their top-order.
Captain Babar Azam (39 off 34) and Fakhar Zaman (55* off 32) played support roles to perfection as Mohammed Rizwan (67 off 52) led the men-in-green’s batting charge. Mitchell Starc (2/38) picking up some key wickets towards the end did mitigate some of the batting flamboyance; but from the looks of it, by the end of first-innings, it seemed as if Pakistan were all but through to the World Cup final.
This belief was further backed up by the Pakistani bowling attack, who bowled some great couple of over upfront. Shaheen Shah Afridi struck early, picking up the key scalp of Aaron Finch in the first over itself. But it was Shadab Khan’s magical spell that really seemed to have sealed the deal for the Super 12’s unbeaten team. The leg-spin wizard picked up 4 wickets for just 26 runs to leave the Aussies reeling at 96/5.
PCB Twitter account makes a wrong post on Babar Azam’s achievement
As a matter of fact, Shadab and Pakistan’s bowling brilliance in the first half of the game saved some blushes for the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), who had made an embarrassing faux-pas earlier in the match. During Pakistan’s batting innings, skipper Babar Azam reached a milestone of 2500 T20I runs. What made the achievement even more special was the fact that he managed to get there in just 62 innings- the fastest among all international batsmen.
The accolade sure came as a great deal of pride for Babar as well as the PCB, who made a celebratory post on Twitter. But unfortunately, they got their stats jumbled up before publishing the post; which resulted in the graphic comparing Babar’s T20I prowess with the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Vijay Hazare, and Sourav Ganguly- players who have never featured in T20Is! The only contemporary player on the list was India’s Cheteshwar Pujara, although even he is yet to feature in an international T20 match.
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Cricket enthusiast Mufaddal Vohra made a quick note of the PCB’s error and posted it on their Twitter account. Within seconds, their Twitter wall was reeling with funny comments and jibes at the Pakistan Board’s social page.
A tweet from official Pakistan Cricket handle. pic.twitter.com/xnDfRHQg9n
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) November 11, 2021
https://twitter.com/Arya_satark/status/1458821932212621319?s=20
That's why I keep saying replace Kl with Pujara
— Pushkar (@musafir_hu_yar) November 11, 2021
They even count gully cricket scores, Ya Allah
— Missile Man (@FrictionFactor7) November 11, 2021
https://twitter.com/PreethuTweets/status/1458821931675705345?s=20
https://twitter.com/strongFource/status/1458821838864224264?s=20
If all the social media trolling wasn’t enough, Matthew Wade upset the Pakistani fans with the final knockout punch. Well, punches, more specifically, 3 of them, as he scooped Afridi for three successive maximums in the penultimate over of the match to take Australia to victory.