Babar Azam, who was in excellent form, played an innings of 66 runs in 46 balls.
Lahore, Australia ended their first Pakistan tour in 24 years with a three-wicket win in the one-off T20I match on Tuesday. Captain Aaron Finch’s 55 runs helped Australia register a victory at 163 for seven with five balls to spare.
Ben McDermott (22 not out) took the team to victory with a four off Haris Rauf. Earlier, Nathan Ellis took four for 28 as Australia restricted Pakistan to 162 for eight.
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Babar Azam, who was in excellent form, played an innings of 66 runs in 46 balls. Australia, touring Pakistan for the first time since 1998, won the three-Test series 1-0 but lost 1-2 in the one-day international series. Travis Head, who scored a century in the first ODI, played a swashbuckling innings of 26 off 14 balls and added 40 off 21 balls to give Australia a quick start with Finch.
Winners are grinners!
A wonderful tour of Pakistan comes to a close #PAKvAUS pic.twitter.com/E3Oloi0Hyu
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) April 5, 2022
Josh Inglis, who was ruled out of the ODI series after being found to be COVID-19 positive, also contributed 24 runs while Marcus Stoinis scored 23 runs in just nine balls with the help of five fours. Pakistan’s bowling was also directionless. Hasan Ali conceded 30 runs in three overs while he did not get any success. Fast bowler Mohammad Wasim (2 for 30) bowled Stoinis and Cameron Green in successive overs.
Shaheen Afridi (2 for 21) sent Finch and Sean Abbott to the pavilion in the 19th over but McDermott took the team to the target. Earlier, Pakistan got off to a good start with a 67-run opening partnership between Azam and Mohammad Rizwan (23). Green, one of the three players making his debut in the Australian team, broke this partnership by bowling Rizwan. Green caught Fakhar Zaman (00) on the next ball at the hands of Finch at mid-on.
Adam Zampa (1 for 29) got Babar caught by Nathan Ellis in the 16th over. He hit six fours and two sixes in his 46-ball knock. Ellis smashed the lower middle order with three wickets in his last two overs but Usman Qadir added 18 runs in the final over from debutant pacer Ben Dwarhuis to take the team to a challenging score. Ben spent 42 runs while he did not get any success. (agency)