Saud Shakeel played a blinder in the first warmup match against New Zealand on a batting-friendly surface. He joined Rizwan, the centurion, after the skipper departed, scoring 80 0f 84 balls. He looked fluent and elegant during his innings. He played with freedom and no fear of being bowled out, and that’s what Pakistan need in the ICC World Cup 2023.
In his fearless innings, he faced 53 balls for his 75 runs at a strike 140+. He smashed 4 sixes and 5 fours in his well-paced innings. He timed the ball well. He timed the ball well. In his complete innings, it never looked like that is playing his first white-ball match.
The summary is that Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat first. The start was not what Pakistan was looking for. Pakistan lost Imam at 6 and Shafique at 45; after that, Babar and Rizwan gave them a solid platform. Babar and Rizwan added 114 runs, only consumed 110 balls.
Saud Shakeel, Salman Agha, Shadab Khan, and Iftikhar made use of the platform and finished the innings at 345 for the loss of 5 wickets. The number of boundaries Pakistan scored in their whole innings is 38 ( the number of sixes is 12, and the number of Fours is 26), giving the Black Caps a huge total to chase.
Shaheen and Haris are rested. What do you think that the inexperienced bowling lineup will depend on this total on this batting-friendly wicket, or New Zealand will have the last laugh?
