(Football news) Alex Hales scored a match-winning fifty in his first international game since March 2019 and helped England chase a modest 159-run with ease in Karachi. With this six-wicket win, the visitors now lead the seven match series 1-0 .
Hales came into the squad as a result of Jonny Bairstow's golf injury, the opener went onto score 53 off 40, which was his ninth T20I fifty featuring 7 fours and set up a perfect chase for his side. Harry Brook also impressed with an unbeaten score of 42 off 25, Hales added 55 runs for the fourth wicket with Harry Brook before Haris Rauf got him out in the 17th over. In the first innings Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam got the hosts off to a good start after adding 51 runs in the PowerPlay. Rizwan went on to score his 17th T20I fifty and also became the joint-fastest player to score 2000 T20I runs in 52 innings
Soon after Rizwan's fifty, England bounced back with Adil Rashid's googly and sent Babar back on 31 off 24. Pakistan drastically slowed down post that as they only managed to score 87/1 in the first 10 overs, and 71/6 in the last ten overs. The dismissal of Babar in the 10th over really took the momentum out of Pakistan's innings as more wickets followed. England picked up three wickets inside 11 balls including the dangerous wicket of Rizwan, who was deceived by Moeen Ali and got out stumped. It took a 17-ball 28 from Iftikhar Ahmed to get Pakistan past 150 as debutant Luke Wood shone with figures of 3 for 24 and veteran Rashid had 2 for 27 to restrict Pakistan to a modest total.
Pakistan kept themselves in the match with regular wickets but leaked a few too many runs while at it. England got good starts from Philip Salt, Dawid Malan and Ben Duckett but Hales played a crucial role in keeping the scoreboard ticking. After Dahani got Salt out in the Powerplay, Usman Qadir brought Pakistan right into the game with the wickets of Malan and Duckett but Brook and Hales took the game away.
Brief Scores: Pakistan 158/7 in 20 overs (Rizwan 68; Wood 3-24) lost to England 160/4 in 19.2 overs (Hales 53, Brook 42*; Qadir 2-36) by 6 wickets
