Pakistan’s captain, Salman Ali Agha, thinks the ball bounced off the ground before getting caught by the keeper to dismiss Fakhar Zaman in the all-important Pakistan-India clash. Choosing careful words lest a dissent peeks through his response, getting him an official reprimand, Agha said,
“Umpires can make mistakes,” he said. “But it did look like it bounced ahead of the keeper to me. I might be wrong. But those are calls for umpires to make. To me, it looked like it bounced before the keeper. I might be mistaken, but so might be the umpire.”
Fakhar was promoted to open for Pakistan with Sahibzada Farhan, and got off to a flying start, hitting three authoritative fours in his nine-ball stay, before India appealed for a caught behind. Hardik Pandya bowled a wide of off, good length ball which seemed to have taken some deflection off his fingers, edging Fakhar’s bat on the way to Sanju Samson. Samson could only take a low catch, which gave rise to the controversy.
The third umpire, Ruchira Palliyaguruge, decided it was a fair catch, much to Pakistan and Fakhar’s surprise. And although Saim Ayub, who came in next, did not let the momentum fizzle out, Pakistan’s captain said they could have gone over 190 had Fakhar stayed longer.
“The way [Fakhar] was batting, if he had batted through the powerplay, we would probably have scored 190.”
Along with Saim, Farhan made merry as well by getting a 34-ball fifty. However, he suddenly lost the tempo, scoring 7 runs from his next eleven balls before getting dismissed. This, followed by lacklustre batting from overs 11 to 16, got Pakistan to settle with a 171-run total by the end of the innings.
“The batting was a lot better today, and that’s a positive,” Agha said. “The way our start was, we could have scored 15 more. But when the ball goes soft after ten overs, it’s not as easy to bat. But we didn’t bowl as well in the power play and got punished. But our start should have ensured we scored 180.”
India made light work of the chase, scoring 69 runs in the power play and 105 runs before they lost their first wicket in the tenth over. Even when Pakistan did manage to choke the run flow a little, India were out of danger because of how they batted in the first ten overs. Pakistan’s bowling dragged the game to the nineteenth over, but there wasn’t anything that threatened India’s survival.
“Bowling or batting, we look to play the perfect game,” Agha said. “To win, you have to excel in all three facets of the game. We didn’t field well or start well with the ball. We have to forget this game because we have one the day after tomorrow. We’re looking forward to delivering a better performance there.”
Pakistan are now at the bottom of the table, and have entered the must-win territory in their remaining two games, against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh respectively. They’d also want some of the other results to go their way, including Bangladesh or India losing at least one of their games, to make it to the final on Sunday.
