After sealing a place in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup 2021 with a 45-run win over Namibia in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Pakistan captain Babar Azam was happy with the way his team has played in the tournament so far. With four wins from four matches, Pakistan are the first team from both the Super 12 groups to qualify for the semi-finals. They started the campaign with a win over India and then knocked on New Zealand and Afghanistan before registering easy wins over Namibia today. His next and last Super 12 match is against Scotland on 7 November.
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Talking about the win, Azam said that the team is waiting for the semi-finals. “Everything has gone according to plan, we are looking forward to the semi-finals and playing our cricket with the same intensity,” Azam said after Pakistan extended their unbeaten run in the competition.
Pakistan won the toss and unsurprisingly opted to bat first, but Azam revealed the logic behind it during the post-match presentation presser, saying that the team had a different game plan for today’s game. Azam said, “Today it was a different plan. We wanted the opening partnership to be deep and it worked for us. Azam scored 70 off 49 balls – his third half-century in the tournament and Mohammad Rizwan (79* off 50 balls). ) added 113 runs for the opening wicket.
Pakistan beat Namibia by 45 runs to reach semi-finals
Riwan, who started off slowly, picked up the pace in the later stages of Pakistan’s innings, helping his team post a scintillating 189/2. Mohammad Hafeez, who had a quiet tournament with the bat, also contributed 32 runs to provide late momentum to the Pakistan innings. With the ball, Hasan Ali also had a comeback of a good 4-0-22-1, and Azam picked up the performance of these two. “We have good players in Hafeez and Hasan Ali and they will be important in the next phase and it was important that we tick those boxes,” Azam said.
Ali, Imad Wasim, Haris Rauf and Shadab Khan claimed a wicket each to restrict Namibia to 144/5 despite a late David Weiss-order (43 off 31 balls). Azam admitted that his team’s ground fielding could have been better. “There was some dew that didn’t help with the fielding, but that’s no excuse, we need to get better,” he said.
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