DUBAI: Pakistan will try to avoid the ignominy of losing a “home” series 0-3 when they take on England in the third match of their T20 International series on Monday (today). They have quite a bit of work to do if they are to stop that from happening. They’ve looked sluggish on the field compared to their counterparts and haven’t managed to summon much individual brilliance either, save for Afridi, who snared three for 15 in addition to his heroics with the bat in the second match on Friday. The targets which England have set in the series have been stiff, but not insurmountable. The top-order batsmen, especially Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik, need to make a bigger impact than they have in this series and not leave too much to the lower order to do. After all, Afridi, though he may have seemed like a superhero minus the cape last time, can only do so much. Though they have won the series, England have not looked invincible. There was a lesson or two in the second match for them. They had done reasonably well to notch up 172 for 8 and then reduce Pakistan to 120 for 6 in the 17th over. The equation was 53 from 20 balls when the visitors ever so slightly took the foot off the pedal. It’s not the most prudent thing to ever assume, especially in the shortest format, that the game is ever done and dusted until it truly is. An eight-ball 24, vintage stuff from Shahid Afridi, and an overthrow that raced away to the boundary rope gave the crowd hope before England doused it, coming away with a three-run win. “We didn’t play our best, we certainly weren’t as fluent as we would like, but we got up to a good score,” said Jos Buttler, captaining the side after Eoin Morgan opted to take a break. “Then we thought, we had already done the work with the ball, but Afridi came in and played as he can.” Flexibility will be key if England are to add to their World T20 silverware next year, and the think-tank is clearly leaving no stone unturned to ensure that they are prepared for whatever is thrown at them. If they can now pull off a 3-0 scoreline to go along with their 3-1 victory in the One-day Internationals, it will be a great effort, especially as the critics were in full force after a 2-0 loss in Tests earlier this month.
