2nd T201 was played between South Africa as Pakistan are on a short 10 day tour to South Africa. The first match between the teams went to the host in an unconvincing manner as South Africa had won that match by 4 runs due to D/L method but still Pakistan were hunting for a desperate victory while the Proteas were looking forward to maintain the streak. What happened, let's find out.
Pakistan same as the first match won the toss but elected to bat first. The pitch looked real slower than that of Johannesburg and looked to be an amazing track to bat on. Pakistan called back Saeed Ajmal for Anwer Ali while South Africa made 3 changes. They brought David Weise for Lonwabo Tsotsobe, Aaron Phangiso for Imran Tahir and AB de Villiers for Henry Davids.
Pakistan started really cautiously as they stood with just 25 runs in 4 overs for 1 wicket. It looked as the Pakistani will be soon back in their hut just like they had been doing earlier but this time the skipper Muhammad Hafeez and Umar Akmal had different ideas. Hafeez and Akmal scored marvellously for their respective 63(5x4s 3x6s) and 64(5x4s 4x6s) runs.
However the competition between Muhammad Hafeez & Dale Steyn was again won by Steyn as he again dismissed Hafeez for the 13th time.Pakistan moved towards an immense total. With a bit of help from Boom Boom Afridi Pakistan unexpectedly scored a mighty total of 176 runs/4 wickets setting a massive target of 177 runs for the hosts to chase on.
Quinton de Kock and Hashim Amla got the early boundaries in the powerplay which they needed. Unfortunately the inform youngster fell to Shahid Afridi on his very first bell. He left the crease after scoring 26 runs(4x4s 0x6s). Later on Afridi took away the wickets 2 major wickets of AB de Villiers and the Protean skipper Faf du Plessis. It gave South Africa a big jerk and soon after the dismissal of Hashim Amla(48 runs 5x4s 0x6s) by Saeed Ajmal South Africa looked to scramble all over the place but then came in JP Duminy and David Miller. Both of them tried extremely hard to pull back the match. The match came to an immense last over when only 17 runs were needed for the hosts to take away the series but Sohail Tanvir saved the day for Pakistan by defending these runs with his perfect yorkers giving Pakistan a 7 runs victory.The series ended up 1-1 sharing the silver ware.
Finally Pakistan have broken the shatters as they look back on their winning track but all this happened due to a good batting performance from the struggling Pakistanis. Man of the Match & Man of the series, both the awards were claimed by the Pakistani skipper Muhammad Hafeez giving an excellent all-around performance in the series...........
Still we are left with the 3 ODIs comimg and see if Pakistan can keep up the good work or the Soyth Africa will come back with a strong wish of revival.Wait and watch......
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