Pakistan has started their campaign with a win against Bangladesh by 21 runs, Pakistan started with announcing the squad 3 hours before the start of the match surprisingly dropping Mohamad Asif from the starting XI. Shahid Afridi won the toss and elected to bat first on a decent batting track, a foundation of 142 runs for the opening wicket was posted with Salman Butt and Kamran Akmal scoring 73 each of 46 and 55 balls respectively. Bangladesh usually depends on their spinners to get them wickets but unfortunately for them they failed miserably against Pakistan who are considered to be good players of spin bowling, some wayward bowling from Bangladesh helped Pakistan post a healthy total of 172 runs. Salman Butt answered his critics well with his batting that got him the Man of the match award as well, scoring at a good strike rate of 158.69 proving that T20 is not only the game of hitters and unorthodox batsmen.
Bangladesh started their chase by loosing Imrul Kayes in the very first over who faced just 2 deliveries for his duck, Mohamad Aamer carried on the tradition of taking wicket in his very first over of a tournament. Sooner losing Tamim Iqbal it was all upon the shoulders of Mohamad Ashraful and Captain Shakib Al Hasan. The pair batted brilliantly and proved to be very dangerous for Pakistan, they played some outstanding shots in their stand of 91 runs which was finally broken by Mohamad Sami who got rid of Shakib Al Hasan by getting him caught in the deep, Bangladesh never came out of that blow and Mohamad Ashraful followed soon to the pavilion. Bangladesh fell 21 runs short of Pakistan total, Mohamad Sami ended up with figures of 3-29 whereas Mohamad Aamer was very economical and went on to take 2 wickets by just giving 16 runs in his quota of 4 overs. However Pakistan always missed a 3rd seamer especially when Ashraful and Shakib were batting.
Pakistan will be playing their 2nd league game today against a strong Australian side that starts at 13:30 local, 17:30 GMT.
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