- Details
Toss : Pakistan won toss and decided to bat
Teams:
England Team : JJ Roy, AD Hales, JE Root, EJG Morgan*, JC Buttler?, JWA Taylor, MM Ali, CR Woakes, AU Rashid, DJ Willey, RJW Topley
Pakistan Team: Azhar Ali*, Babar Azam, Mohammad Hafeez, Iftikhar Ahmed, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Rizwan, Sarfraz Ahmed?, Anwar Ali, Wahab Riaz, Zafar Gohar, Mohammad Irfan
Pakistan innings: Azhar Ali spoke about playing an aggressive form of cricket in the remaining part of the series but apart from himself, Babar Azam and Mohammad Hafeez it appeared that the rest of the batting line-up had no idea what to do. From a steady 132/3, Pakistan fell over to 161/8 in no time before Wahab Riaz combined with Zafar Gohar to put on 26 and with Mohammad Irfan 21 runs respectively. Pakistan ending up on 208 All out in 49.5 overs
Fall of Wickets:
1-45 (Babar Azam, 10.6 ov),
2-92 (Azhar Ali, 19.3 ov),
3-132 (Mohammad Hafeez, 29.4 ov),
4-135 (Sarfraz Ahmed, 30.3 ov),
5-138 (Mohammad Rizwan, 32.2 ov),
6-145 (Iftikhar Ahmed, 35.4 ov),
7-156 (Anwar Ali, 39.3 ov),
8-161 (Shoaib Malik, 41.2 ov)
England innings: Defending a lowish score, Pakistan bowlers needed to hit the ground running which they did. Mohammad Irfan bowled like a man possessed to remove Roy and almost took out Hales and debutante Zafar Gohar impressed all with his spin to take out Joe Root. Morgan and Hales then survived but with the ball spinning prodigiously, Gohar removed Hales to give Pakistan a major breakthrough. More drama was to follow with Morgan being bowled by a superb delivery from the ever dependable Malik. Jos Buttler and James Taylor then took over and steadied nerves, helped in part by Sarfraz Ahmed's stumping let off to take England to a comfortable 6 wicket victory. England now go 2-1 up with the last match of the series to be played in Dubai on Friday.
Fall of Wickets:
1-12 (Roy, 2.2 ov),
2-27 (Root, 5.5 ov),
3-87 (Hales, 20.3 ov),
4-93 (Morgan, 21.5 ov)
Summary: Pakistan batting failures are coming back to haunt them in situations where they should win easily. Today they went from 92 for 1 to 208 all out, losing 9 wickets went for 116 which cannot be a tenable situation if they wish to improve their ranking. The final game of the series is on Friday in Dubai and Pakistan need a miracle cure for their batting.
