Haris Rauf takes a brilliant catch: Pakistan have made a sensational comeback in the first match of their ongoing T20 series against England after suffering a shameful defeat in the ODI series against a relatively young English side. The Paks won by a huge margin of 31 runs in what proved to be a high scoring match.
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English captain Eoin Morgan won the toss and opted to bowl first. The main players of England’s squad returned to the playing eleven in this match after being ruled out from the ODI series due to COVID-19 outburst in their camp.
Coming in to bat first, Pakistan got a dream start thanks to wonderful knocks by Mohammad Rizwan (63 off 41) and Babar Azam (85 off 49). Their 100+ runs partnership gave Pakistan a platform to build upon and they ended up putting up a humongous score of 232/6. This is one of the highest ever runs scored by Pakistan in the shortest format of the game.
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England’s chase did not start off well. They lost a couple of early wickets and lost their momentum. Opener Dawid Malan departed for 1 and Jonny Bairstwo scored just 11 runs. However, Rajasthan Royals batsman Liam Livingstone put up a show and scored a fantastic century to keep England’s hope of a miracle intact. Unfortunately it was pretty much a one-man show for England and none of the other batsmen worked out well. The long quarantine has seemingly taken a toll on England’s players.
Pakistan were on-point in their fielding too. Pak pacer Haris Rauf took a brilliant catch to dismiss in-form batsman Moeen Ali. What was even more astonishing was the fact that his firm grip did not lose the ball even after colliding with Sohaib Maqsood. This undeniably will go down as one of the best and the most fearless catches of the series.