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Pakistan Defeated Australia – Afridi Rocked

Shahid Afradi

A team desperate to erase painful recent memories immediately settled in at their new, adopted venue, with a four-wicket win against a struggling Australian side in Dubai. The devastation caused by Shahid Afridi’s career-best 6 for 38 had all but shut Australia out of the match before the halfway stage of their innings. A late recovery pushed them to 168 but it wasn’t enough to seriously challenge an unpredictable Pakistan outfit. Pakistan stuttered, rebuilt, stumbled again and a late push by Afridi, contributing an adrenalin-filled yet brief 24, pushed them towards a win.
The ultimate difference between the two sides was spin. While Pakistan’s pair of Afridi and Ajmal shared eight wickets, Australia’s Nathan Hauritz bowled four overs and failed to pick up a wicket. It wouldn’t be fair to blame Australia’s lone specialist spinner for the defeat. It was a collective failure of their middle order to read the spinners who mercilessly ran through the batting and effected a top and middle-order crumbling to the tune of 8 for 27.
Australia’s rapid demise was a reflection of their ordinary recent one-day form. A collapse of this magnitude exposed a weakness against spin which was also on show in South Africa, even with a number of familiar returning faces in the ranks. With the ball gripping and turning, Afridi’s mixture of googlies and topspinners caused most of the problems, but the relatively inexperienced Ajmal offered little respite with his doosras.

Fall of wickets

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