Pakistan pacers once again destroyed Australia’s batting lineup at Perth as they claimed a historic ODI series win Down Under. Shaheen Afridi, Naseem Shah, and Haris Rauf accounted for eight of the nine wickets and the batting led up Saim Ayub and Abdullah Shafique proved to be enough for Pakistan to win an ODI series in Australia for the first time since 2002.
Electing to bowl first on a spicy Perth track, Naseem Shah and Afridi troubled the Aussie batters from the start, before the former provided the first breakthrough in the form of Jake Fraser-McGurk’s wicket. Aaron Hardie was caught in two minds as he left a ball from Afridi, only to be caught in the slips.
With captain Josh Inglis dismissed by Shah, the hosts were 56/3. Matthew Short and Cooper Connolly were at the crease as they looked to get their side out of trouble, before Haris Rauf, as he had so often done in this series, came into the picture to turn the game on its head.
Rauf got Short, who tried to pull him away and then three overs later he got rid of Glenn Maxwell, for the third time in this series. Connolly went retired hurt, after being struck on the hand by Muhammad Hasnain. Hasnain went on to get the wicket of Marcus Stonis to leave the Aussies reeling at 88/6.
However, Adam Zampa and Sean Abbott stitched together a 30-run partnership to give Australia some decency on the scoreboard. But any hopes of providing a competitive total were snuffed out when Shaheen Afridi was brought back into the attack and Abbott held out for an impressive catch by Rauf.
Naseem Shah plucked Zampa’s wicket and Afridi castled Lance Morris, to leave the visitor needing just 141 for a historic series win.
Saim Ayub and Abdullah Shafique started steadily as they had done in Adelaide. Ayub had a few swings and misses before he started finding his touch. With a paltry total in sight, both batters took time to punish the bad balls and kept the scoreboard ticking. Australia were sloppy in field too, which didn’t help them at all.
Ayub was dropped, just as he was in the previous game. Then Zampa put down a sitter to give Shafique a lifeline. It wasn’t until 84 runs that the first wicket fell when Shafique played it straight to Morris for a caught & bowled. In the same over, Ayub dragged the ball onto the stumps, leaving him eight short of a 50.
Babar Azam and the captain Mohammad Rizwan calmed any nerves with their simplistic approach to gun down the chase. Rizwan burst into life as they inched closer to win hitting two sixes and a four. Azam smashed four boundaries and finished off the match as he did in the second ODI, with six of Zampa.
In Rizwan’s first series as the national team’s captain, he has delivered a stirring win over the ODI World Champions. Now, the task would be to carry this vein of form in the Champions Trophy next year. But first up is the T20 series against Australia, which will will start from November 14.
Sherjeel Malik is the editor at FanHaat with a writing experience in multiple sports. He oversees the editorial and content coverage at FanHaat and writes often around combat sports, football and other marquee sports. A professional highlight of his career was when WWE’s Paul Heyman shared one of his articles on his social media.
Apart from writing, editing and watching sports, he likes to indulge in reading fiction, watching war documentaries and is a fan of Liverpool FC
