KARACHI: Babar Azam’s blistering 117-ball 107 and Agha Salman’s enterprising 46-ball 58 steered Pakistan to 334-6 in the fourth ODI in Karachi on Friday.
After being sent in to bat, the home side lost Fakhar Zaman for 14 runs off 17 balls. But Babar Azam and Shan Masood (44) put on a crucial partnership.
It was Babar, along with Salman, who put on a valuable partnership of 117 runs in just 100 balls, paving the way for Pakistan to post a mammoth total for the visitors.
Babar Azam’s innings was studded with 10 fours, before he was dismissed by Ben Lister.
Agha Salman played a brilliant innings and hit four sixes and two huge sixes.
Riding on a dazzling, Shaheen Shah Afridi treated New Zealand with utter contempt and played an unbeaten innings, scoring 23 runs off 7 balls, which included a four and three massive sixes.
Other batters including Iftikhar Ahmed (28), Muhammad Rizwan (24) and Muhammad Haris (17) also contributed to the scorecard.
The bowling was nothing special from the New Zealand side, except for Matt Henry (3-65), who took three wickets.
Ben Lister (1-57) and Ish Sodhi (1-53) took a scalp each.
Blair Tickner (0-74), Cole McConchie (0-61) and James Neesham (0-15) remained wicketless.
Earlier, New Zealand won the toss and decided to bat first against Pakistan.
In the ODI team rankings, Pakistan stood at third place with Australia leading the chart followed by Indian on the second position. Today’s victory will help Pakistan become the No. 1 ODI team in the world.
