Pakistan crush WI again to record 3-0 clean sweep

By Khalid Hussain

April 04, 2018

KARACHI: West Indies finally came out of a jetlag to give their most forceful performance of the three-match Twenty20 International series but still failed to stop Pakistan from sweeping the contest 3-0 with another effortless win.

With a near-packed National Stadium providing a perfect backdrop, West Indies rode on fine knocks from Andre Fletcher, Marlon Samuels and especially Dinesh Ramdin to post 153-6 but that total proved to be insufficient against a power-packed Pakistan line-up.

Having beaten West Indies by 143 and 82 runs in the previous two games, the Pakistanis made short work of the toothless opposition to romp to their third straight win by eight wickets with 19 balls to spare.

Big-hitting opener Fakhar Zaman gave Pakistan an electric start, smashing a 17-ball 40 to play the lead role in a 61-run opening stand with Babar Azam, who followed his unbeaten 97 with a 40-ball 51.

Babar added 52 runs with Hussain Talat before falling to Odean Smith. Hussain then finished the job with fellow series debutant Asif Ali, scoring 41 runs from 24 balls in an unbeaten stand for the third wicket.

Hussain followed his scores of 63 and 41 earlier in the series with an unbeaten 31 while Asif was unbeaten on a 16-ball 25. It was Hussain who hit the winning runs, a boundary at square leg off Keemo Paul to complete the rout.

It was Pakistan’s 17th win in 20 matches since the 2016 world Twenty20 championship helping Sarfraz Ahmed’s team to consolidate its place at the top of the world T20 rankings.Fakhar Zaman, who was named man-of-the-match, was pleased to finally click in the series. “I try my best, and the plan with captain and coach is to do whatever I’m best at — so happy that today my innings came off,” he said. “During the first game, I felt good but I got run out. In the last match I realised how often I get run out. Working hard in the nets so that I can play cricket for long.”

The man-of-the-series award was handed to Babar Azam for his 166 runs in the series.“Whatever I had planned for this series, I wanted to be Man of the Series, and Allah has completed that wish. Seniors like Shoaib bhai help me a lot in dealing with situations during the game,” he said.

Earlier, for the first time in the series, the tourists got the opportunity to bat first on the batting-friendly surface at the National Stadium. They lost opener Chadwick Walton early to Mohammad Nawaz in a slow start but Fletcher and Samuels made it clear that the West Indians won’t bow down without a fight when they put on 72 from 56 balls in an entertaining second-wicket stand. But just when the partnership was starting to look dangerous Shadab Khan removed the seasoned Samuels with a superb googly that spun into the stumps and left the batsmen completely bamboozled. Samuels made 31 from 25 balls with two sixes and an equal number of fours.

From then onwards, the West Indians kept losing wickets at regular intervals and were unable to put up a big enough total to avoid a 3-0 clean sweep. The first to go was debutant Andre McCarthy who fell to Shadab for 5. The bigger blow for the visitors, however, came five balls later when Nawaz’s lighting throw from mid-off ran out Fletcher. The opener was his team’s top-scorer with 52 from 43 balls that included three sixes and four fours.

In the very next over Faheem Ashraf trapped Rovman Powell LBW for just 2 and West Indies were now gasping for air at 96-5, having lost their last four wickets for just 22. But Ramdin then got into action adding 44 runs with his captain Jason Mohammad (13) before hitting Usman Shinwari for two consecutive sixes off the last two balls of the innings to give some respectability to the West Indian total. Ramdin’s stunning cameo fetched him 42 runs from just 18 balls with three sixes and four fours.

Pakistan opted to rest their pace duo of Mohammad Amir and Hassan Ali. Shaheen Shah Afridi, the 17-year-old was handed an international debut, a reward for his impressive showing in the U19 World Cup. Usman Shinwari was also brought in to play his first game in the series. West Indies brought in McCarthy in place of Kesrick Williams.

West Indies won toss

West Indies

C A K Walton c Babar b Nawaz 0

A D S Fletcher run out 52

M N Samuels b Shadab 31

A M McCarthy c Fakhar b Shadab 5

R Powell lbw b Faheem 2

*J N Mohammed c Sarfraz b Usman 13

†D Ramdin not out 42

K M A Paul not out 1

Extras (lb 6, nb 1) 7

Total (6 wickets; 20 Overs) 153