Pakistan beat New Zealand by 9 runs to level T20I series

Pakistan levelled the T20I series against New Zealand by winning the final match by 9 runs on Sunday at the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore.

New Zealand won the third and fourth matches while Pakistan emerged victorious in the second after the first in the series was abandoned.

While chasing the 179-run target, the visitors were troubled by Shaheen Afridi’s heroics 4-30.

The 24-year-old gave 30 runs in four overs at the economy rate of 7.50.

Shaheen also became the first bowler to take 50 wickets in T20 cricket. Behind him is India’s Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who has 43 wickets.

Afridi, the left-arm fast bowler provided the breakthrough to his team while defending 179 on a track which looked to be batting-friendly.

In the 15th over, Afridi sent James Neesham and Zakary Foulkes back to the pavilion on back-to-back deliveries. He ended his spell with 4/30 figures.

New Zealand captain Michael Bracewell won the toss and invited the hosts to bat first in the last T20 match.

As Pakistan opened the innings, Saeem Ayub suffered his fifth consecutive innings failure and became the wicket of William O’Rourke after scoring just one run.

Captain Babar Azam and Usman Khan took over the reins and put up a partnership of 73 runs for the second wicket.

At the score of 81, Ash Sodhi gave his team a breakthrough by picking up Usman Khan’s wicket, who scored 31 runs.

Skipper Babar Azam continued to play well and scored a half-century along with Fakhar Zaman to take the score to 123, he was bowled out at 69 off 44 balls.

Fakhar Zaman displayed some aggressive batting and played a crucial role in bringing Pakistan’s score to a reasonable total by adding 43 runs off 33 balls.

The home team scored 178 runs at the loss of 5 wickets in the allotted overs.

Zachary Foulkes, William O’Rourke, Ben Sears, Ash Sodhi and James Neesham bagged one wicket each for New Zealand.

New Zealand suffered a huge blow at the start of the innings when Shaheen Shah Afridi bowled Tom Blundell who scored 4 runs in the first over with an in-swinging beauty.