Pakistan seems to be in a horrible state at this point. After 14 overs, they are 126/6, with Iftikhar Ahmed and Shaheen Shah Afridi at crease. Pakistan top order did a decent job, but then there was a middle order collapse. England spinners were exceptional and picked up wickets at crucial intervals. Adil Rashid and Liam Livingstone picked up two wickets each, while the seamers (including Mark Wood, Jofra Archer and Chris Jordan) went for more than 10 runs per over.
Finally, an iconic partnership has been back in order and once again we got the chance to see Babar Azam and Muhammad Rizwan as openers and playing together after a long time and it is such a long time since we have seen them as openers last time in 2023 before World Cup 2023. It means you can say that we are seeing them as openers together after 7 or 8 months which is such a long time.
However, now talk about what they both have done, so they both played very amazing, and made across 60 runs without losing any wicket in 6 overs but then Babar Azam lost his wicket. Later on, no batsmen from the Pakistan team were able to capitalize this start and they lost all their wickets at the score of just 157 runs.
In the first overs of Pakistan's batting on that the Pakistan team played very well, in short, you can say they played amazingly in the powerplay. They played with a huge run rate in the powerplay as they made 50 in just 5 overs and also inside this score, there are too many boundaries involved.
That 50 contains too many boundaries from Babar Azam and Muhammad Rizwan. Those early runs didnt give a feel to the Pakistan team that they didnt make good score in the end when the wickets were going down quickly after the initial opening partnership. In this match, the Pakistan team middle order collapsed badly and that was the real cause of their loss.
