Clinical Pakistan make easy work of inexperienced West Indies

Visitors West Indies stood no chance against Pakistan as they folded for just 137 runs to lose the game by 63 runs. The crowd at the Karachi Stadium saw a routing of the most ruthless proportions with Pakistan clinically taking apart West Indies in both innings of the game. Sent to bat first after losing the toss, Pakistan first notched up 200 runs and then wrapped the WI innings up with one over remaining.

Things didn’t start perfectly though.

The prolific Pakistan captain Babar Azam continued his poor patch of form from the Bangladesh series and got out in the first over for a two-ball duck. Things looked in control for the visitors even till the final over of the powerplay when Romario Shepherd removed Fakhar Zaman for 10 runs. 

Windies would have taken 35/2 in five overs any day, given teams do not generally play in Pakistan conditions anymore. And that’s when it struck.

A brilliant exhibition of shotmaking from Mohammad Rizwan and the art of tenacity from Haider Ali made sure that Pakistan did not lose their third wicket in the next 10 overs. From 35/2, the hosts went upto 140/3 when Rizwan got out in the 16th over.

Haider’s innings especially stood out. Coming into bat when Akeal Hosein was bowling really well, the right hander took a long time to settle in. Scoring 12 from his first 14 deliveries, Haider look in a spot of bother having not connected a single ball from the middle of his blade. And then came the release.

Haider connected three shots off Odean Smith in the 12th over and there was no looking back. From 12 off 14, he jumped to 27 off 18 and then completed his half century in just 28 balls.

He did slow down a little after Rizwan’s dismissal but managed to score 68 off 39 balls and got out in the final over of the game. 

While Haider Ali dominated the middle phase of the innings, spinner Mohammad Nawaz took on the late hitting responsibilities to hit 30 runs off just 10 balls. This ended up shooting up the Pakistan run-rate in the last three overs of the game with the hosts managing to score 45 off the last 18 balls.

Only Akeal Hosein proved to be effective on the day for West Indies and went for 4.75 RPO bowling in the opening phase of the game. He picked one wicket for 19 runs.

West Indies innings

Scoring 200 was never going to be easy for the Windies who did not have their big names playing in this series, but they ended up folding without even playing the full quota of overs.

The feeling at the time was that Windies failed to see through the tough phases of play, but to be fair, they had a mammoth target to chase down against the likes of Haris Rauf, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Shadab Khan.

However, none of these stalwarts were the best on the night and the limelight was stolen by the 20-year-old Mohammad Wasim Jr who constantly attacked the wickets and bowled out three players with his sheer accuracy.

He removed the wickets of Nicholas Pooran with a searing off stump yorker and then immediately struck once again trapping Devin Thomas plumb in front with another yorker. He picked up four wickets in total.

With the visitors losing three wickets inside the powerplay, the writing was already on the wall that they might lose the game with a big margin. And Pakistan pounced upon the same by doing the basics right. Most of their bowlers attacked the stumps, especially Shadab Khan who walked away as the most economical bowler of the night with figures of 4-1-17-3. 

After Shadab’s excellent performance through the middle overs, Wasim Jr cleaned up the Windies tail to seal victory for the hosts in the first match.

The two teams do not have any time to lay off as they will have to take the field tomorrow itself, on December 14, Tuesday. It will be difficult for the Windies to get back from this loss without their star players, but that is something they already knew.

Windies have come into the series with a clean slate aiming to move away from the shadows of the super stars of the golden generation. Will they be successful? Probably not. But this will probably set them in the right direction for the next cycle of the International trophies.