So this see-saw T20 series, the longest ever played between two international teams, has tilted again. England won the sixth match by eight wickets with 33 balls to spare. That means it’s all tied at three games apiece. Sunday’s game will be decisive.
England’s top order finally clicked, just as the pill will eventually land on your lucky number if you keep spinning the roulette wheel. Phil Salt, who had made 71 runs in his last eight T20 innings for England, splashed 88 runs at the Gaddafi Stadium, off just 41 balls. It was brilliant hitting, all vicious pulls and swinging cuts and rocket drives that leaped across the field so fast that the chasing fielders seemed to move like molasses in January by comparison.
England seemed to have doubled down on the reckless approach that cost them in the previous match here when they lost the match chasing a total less than the 169 Pakistan made this time. Moeen Ali won the toss, again, and took the same decision to bring Pakistan in. Ali had been bitterly disappointed with the way his batsmen had played the last time he did it, but he was delighted with them last Friday night.
Salt could have been caught on the first delivery but the ball has flown very little. He followed it up with four furious shots, three down the ground for four, the other bowled over fine leg for six. Alex Hales joined him and belted Shahnawaz Dahani down the ground for six, then hit Mohammad Wasim for three fours in a row. The two put on 50 runs together in the first three overs of the innings before Hales was trapped on the top edge.
Salt’s answer was more difficult. The fifth over was for 19, the seventh for 20 as Salt brought up his 50 off just 19 balls. Only Moeen and Liam Livingstone have done it faster for England.
At the other end, Dawid Malan shot 26 off 18 before getting out lbw to a ball that swept down the ground. Salt might have broken Livingstone’s record for the fastest century for England too, had Ben Duckett’s next man not batted so well that he ended up making 26 of the 42 England needed when he came to the crease. In the end, Salt was satisfied with scoring individually, which must have been their idea to adjust their approach to the situation of the match.
Pakistan, then, were left to ponder the questionable wisdom of their decision to rest series leading run-scorer Mohammad Rizwan and leading wicket-taker Haris Rauf so they could bring in 21-year-old Mohammad Haris. for his T20 debut and bring back Dahani.
Babar Azam hit just five fours in his first 42 balls before smashing 36 runs off his last 17 deliveries. Photograph: Alex Davidson/Getty Images
England had made two changes of their own, with Richard Gleeson and Reece Topley returning to the squad. Rizwan’s absence meant that his batting relied on Babar Azam, who in turn relied on England’s bowling. He made 87, one less than Salt, but his took 59 balls. It was still a flawless innings, with just five fours in his first 42 balls, then a flurry of 36 from his final 17.
Amidst this, Azam scored his 3,000th run in T20 international cricket. He is only the fifth man to do so, and he got there faster than three of the other four. It took him 81 innings, the same as Virat Kohli did. Azam moved towards 4,000 with sixes off Gleeson, David Willey and Topley, the end of which cost 19 runs.
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Azam was supported by Iftikhar Ahmed, whose grizzled looks and unlikely career have made him a cult hero. It helps that Iftikhar has somehow managed to hold on to his place in the team despite scoring just one fifty and taking 12 wickets for Pakistan in 44 innings across all three formats. But he showed a bit of what his team sees in him, here, with a huge 31 off 21 balls, which included two tremendous sixes down the ground off Adil Rashid. The second of these, which came somewhere in the middle of the Raja Ground, was the biggest of the series at 106m. Then they caught him in midwifery.
Rashid had his second consecutive bad game. He took four balls for 38, to go with his figures of four for 41 on Wednesday evening, and not a single wicket in between. England’s leadership team will be hoping that the problem is just that their floaty leg-spin is not well suited to the Lahore pitches. Pakistan have certainly struggled to target him, and with him being the only spinner in the side on both occasions, England have not been able to control the run rate in the middle of either innings. . In the end it didn’t matter as long as Salt batted like that.