Pakistan’s Wahab Riaz plays a shot during the Pool B match against Zimbabwe at the Gabba Stadium in Brisbane. (Indranil Mukherjee / AFP / Getty Images)
Pakistan, the 1992 Cricket World Cup winner, won for the first time in the 2015 tournament, staving off Zimbabwe in Brisbane, Australia.
Pakistan rallied for the win behind, as the BBC put it, “skipper Misbah-ul-Haq’s stubborn 73 and a fiery half-century from pace bowler Wahab Riaz” that helped Pakistan “recover from 4-2 to reach 235-7.”
Pakistan had its highest score of the tournament, just days after chief selector Moin Khan was ordered to return home by the Pakistan Cricket Board because he had visited a casino.
“I went to the casino to have dinner with some friends but in hindsight it was an inappropriate judgement on my part given the disappointment in the team’s performance at the World Cup,” Khan said last week.
Brendan Taylor’s 50 looked to have put Zimbabwe on course for a famous win.
But Mohammad Irfan, with career-best one-day international figures of 4-30, and Riaz (4-45) won it for Pakistan.
Riaz became the first Pakistani to score a fifty and take four wickets in the same World Cup match – and only the eighth cricketer to achieve the feat.
And victory was important for Misbah’s men, who, after heavy defeats by India and the West Indies, would have faced an uphill battle to progress to the quarter-finals had they lost again.
“It was really tough because it was a make or break game for us,” said the Pakistan captain. “You can’t believe how happy we are because we were out of the tournament if we’d lost this game.”
Zimbabwe lost its captain, Elton Chigumbura, to what appeared to be a quadriceps tear.
After spending most of her career in traditional print sports journalism, Cindy began blogging and tweeting, first as NFL/Redskins editor, and, since August 2010, at The Early Lead. She also is the social media editor for Sports.
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