Pakistan stay alive with win over Canada

WESTBURY, New York (AP):

CANADA’S INEXPERIENCED batters crumbled against pace for yet another low score at the Twenty20 World Cup as Pakistan finally registered its first win yesterday.

The four-pronged Pakistan pace attack, led by Mohammad Amir’s impeccable figures of 2-13, restricted Canada to 106-7, with only opening batter Aaron Johnson showing aggression in his 44-ball 52.

Mohammad Rizwan’s unbeaten half-century (53 not out) anchored Pakistan, who lost to rival India on Sunday, to 107-3 in 17.3 overs for a commanding seven-wicket win.

“Good for us, we needed this win,” Pakistan skipper Babar Azam said. “We started well with the bowling, in the first six overs, (and) we know we had to be up to the mark.”

Johnson sent early tremors in Pakistan’s camp with his back-to-back boundaries off Shaheen Shah Afridi’s first two balls of the match after Babar won the toss and elected to field.

But Amir, who came out of retirement for the World Cup, hit the right areas straight away and buckled the batters as wickets continued to fall around Johnson.

Johnson, who was dropped on 44 by Fakhar Zaman at mid-wicket, hit four boundaries and brought up his half-century with his fourth six before he, too, was finally undone by Naseem Shah in the 14th over.

Fast bowler Haris Rauf became the third quickest bowler to complete 100 wickets in T20 internationals when he had Shreyas Movva (two) caught behind and then found the outside edge of Ravinderpal Singh’s bat in the same over to finish with 2-26.

“Definitely, it was a bit disappointing,” Pakistan-born Canada skipper Saad Bin Zafar said.

“We wanted to play a positive brand of cricket, and I think the wicket was not very helpful. It was difficult to bat early on and not a good toss to lose. We were about 25 to 30 runs short.”

Pakistan’s experiment with Saim Ayub as an opener in the World Cup for the first time didn’t work out as the left-hander struggled to score 6 off 12 balls before he edged Dillon Heyliger (2-18) inside the batting power play.

Rizwan and Babar (33) then had a 63-run stand before the Pakistan skipper banged his bat on the wicket in anger when he tried to guide Heyliger to third man but couldn’t beat the wicketkeeper as Rizwan’s run-a-ball half-century saw Pakistan over the line.

Pakistan, the 2022 runners-up, need to beat Ireland in their last game and also hope co-hosts US lose both their remaining games against India and Ireland to have a chance of advancing on superior net run-rate.

The United States made history by beating Pakistan in the Super Over in Dallas after they defeated Canada in their opening game.