Pakistan’s Sohail Khan, left, celebrates after dismissing South Africa’s AB de Villiers in a crucial part of Pakistan’s close victory.
Pakistan stunned South Africa in the Cricket World Cup on Friday in Auckland to throw Group B a little wide open. In the later match, Ireland defeated Zimbabwe by five runs in a thriller in Hobart, Australia. The opening match of the day was delayed by rain twice. Pakistan batted first and finished with 222 runs all-out; it seemed a low total in a tournament where some teams have scored 400 runs and 300 is above par. The Pakistan captain said after the match he thought his team was “30 or 40 runs short.” Standing in the way was South Africa, with the batters ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the world in the ICC’s ODI rankings. Yet the Pakistan bowlers made it stand. The No. 1 ranked batter, AB deVilliers, scored 77 runs off 58 balls. The No. 2 batter, Hashim Amla, opened the innings and scored 38. The rest of the lineup? 0, 27, 6, 0, 12, 16, 12, 6, 0. South Africa finished 202 all-out. A trio of Pakistan left-arm fast-medium bowlers were the big performers: Mohammad Irfan, Rohat Ali and Wahab Riaz all took three wickets. Sohail Khan took one wicket but it was de Villiers.
South Africa started 67-1 before losing three wickets in 16 minutes to make the match far closer. Technically, Pakistan won by 29 runs; because there were two rain interruptions, cricket employs a scoring system called the Duckworth-Lewis method to scale the runs needed when a match is shortened. Man of the match was Pakistan’s Sarfraz Ahmed. He opened the batting and scored 49 runs, then took five catches in the second innings. In the second match, Ireland finished 331-8. It was a strong innings and looked to put Ireland in control. Yet Zimbabwe answered to the point that it needed seven runs off the final over (six balls) to win the match. Ireland responded by taking the final two wickets in the over. Ed Joyce led Ireland with 112 runs and Andrew Balbirnie added 97. For Zimbabwe, Brendan Taylor, one of the highest-rated ODI batters in the world, scored 121 (off 91 balls) and Sean Williams added 96 to put Zimbabwe to the verge of a huge victory. Zimbabwe finished 326 all-out. The difference was Ireland bowler Alex Cusak; he took four wickets for 32 runs and took the final wicket of the match to seal the victory. Ireland has three wins thus far and could qualify for the quarterfinals. The opening victory over West Indies could prove to be quite crucial.
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