Pak gets consolation win in 5th T20I. New Zealand win series 4-1

 

It is said that all is well that ends well.  It is not known what will happen next in Pakistan cricket team.  But, their T20 series against New Zealand ended with a win.  Pakistani team has managed to win the last T20 International match by 42 runs.  With this, its clean sweep in the 5 T20 International series was averted and the account of the victory of its new T20 captain Shaheen Afridi was opened.  This is the first victory for Pakistan under the T20 captaincy of Shaheen Shah Afridi.

 Shaheen Afridi took the reins of the Pakistani team from the T20 series against New Zealand.  This series was the international debut of his T20 captaincy.  Shaheen and Company had to face defeat in the first 4 matches of the 5 T20 match series.  But, he managed to win the 5th and last match of the series.

 

 The second T20 of the series was played in Christchurch.  Earlier, the fourth T20 match was also played between the two teams here and on the same pitch.  New Zealand had won the fourth T20 International match.  But, in the 5th T20 match, Pakistani bowlers tightened their grip on New Zealand.

Pakistan won the toss and batted first in the match.  There was a change in the opening pair as Hasibullah Khan made his debut in place of Saim Ayub along with Rizwan.  However, Pakistan did not get any benefit from this new opening pair either.  Hasibullah Khan was out without opening the account on the third ball of the first over.

 After this Rizwan got the support of Babar.  But this pair also seemed unsuccessful in giving pace to the score board.  While Rizwan scored only 38 runs in 38 balls, Babar Azam could not go beyond the score of 13 runs even after getting two lives.  After these two, Fakhar Zaman scored a blistering 33 runs in 16 balls, due to which Pakistan team managed to score 134 runs for 8 wickets in 20 overs.

 Now New Zealand had a target of 135 runs, which seemed easy considering its strength.  But, this time the Pakistani bowlers did not let the seemingly easy thing remain that easy for the Kiwis.  Pakistan tried 5 bowlers in the match and everyone tightened their grip on the Kiwi team so much that they could not even score 100 runs.  New Zealand was all out after scoring 92 runs in only 17.2 overs.

Initially New Zealand started well with Finn Allen (22) again looking dangerous but was dismissed by Zaman Khan . Tim Seifert (19) & Will Young (12) looked comfortable but from 52/2 New Zealand collapsed to 92 all out which means they lost the last 8 wickets for 40 runs in a sensational collapse as the Pakistani bowlers tightened their grip .

 For Pakistan, Shaheen Afridi took 2 wickets in 3.2 overs.  Mohammad Nawaz took 2 wickets for 18 runs in 4 overs.  Iftikhar Ahmed failed with the bat but he was most successful with the ball in this match, taking 3 wickets for 24 runs in 4 overs.

Iftikhar Ahmed was the player of the match while Finn Allen for his winning knocks was the player of the series . New Zealand won the series by 4-1 .