History made in Sharjah! Afghanistan beats Pakistan for first time in a T20I match

Pakistan loses to Afghanistan in T20I for the first time ever!

Afghanistan dominated the first match in Sharjah on Friday.

Pakistan went into the match with four debutants including opener Saim Ayub, middle-order batter Tayyab Tahir and right-arm quicks Zaman Khan and Ihsanullah.

In the first T20 match of the series, Pakistan’s acting captain Shadab Khan won the toss and invited Afghanistan to bowl first, which proved fatal.

Though Pakistan fought hard with the ball in the second innings, Mohammad Nabi steered the chase with an unbeaten 38.

Afghan spinners thrashed the Pakistani batting lineup, and the green team was restricted to their fifth-lowest T20 total of 92-9.

Pakistan faced difficulties from the beginning of the innings and Mohammad Haris became the wicket of Fazlul Haq Farooqui after scoring just six runs, while in the next over, Azmatullah Umarzai dismissed Abdullah Shafiq.

Saim Ayub played a turn of 17 runs but Naveen-ul-Haq bowled him on a total score of 39 and gave Pakistan their third loss, but the Pakistani team suffered a big blow when after Tayyab Tahir, Azam Khan also returned to the pavilion without scoring any runs.

Imad Wasim faced 32 balls but the all-rounder struggled throughout the innings. He managed to score just 18 runs and become Fazlul Haq Farooqui’s second wicket.

Shadab Khan and Imad Wasim had brought the score to 60 together when acting captain Shadab’s innings also came to an end.

The Pakistan team could score only 92 runs for the loss of 9 wickets in the stipulated overs, Mohammad Nabi, Fazlul Haq Farooqui and Mujeebur Rehman took two wickets each for Afghanistan.

In pursuit of the target, the Afghanistan team also faced difficulties on a favourable bowling wicket and on a total score of 23, Ehsanullah gave away the wicket of Ibrahim Zadran on the very first ball of his international career.

The Afghan team was not even able to recover from this loss, Gulbuddin Naib also became a victim of Ehsan after one ball.

Pakistan got their third win when Abdullah Shafique took a fine catch off Naseem Shah in the next over ending Rahmanullah Gurbaz’s innings.

The score had reached 45 when Imad Wasim took Karim Jannat’s wicket.

After the fall of four wickets for 45 runs, Pakistan had an illusory hope of getting back into the match, but at this stage, Mohammad Nabi and Jeebullah Zadranshowed some resistance against Pakistani bowling.

Both the players played a responsible game on a difficult wicket and took their team to the target with just 13 balls to go to a historic victory by six wickets, Mohammad Nabi scored 38 runs and Najeeb scored 17 runs.

Pakistani bowlers fought well but they just didn’t have enough runs on the board to defend.

This is the first victory of the Afghanistan team against Pakistan in T20 matches.

Mohammad Nabi was adjudged Man of the Match for his courageous innings and for taking two wickets.

“As professionals, we need to make sure that our recovery is good because to play a match after a full day’s fasting will be a little difficult, but we will need to take care of that”, Shadab Khan said when asked about playing a series during Ramadan.