The final ODI match between England and Pakistan was played today at The Rose Bowl, Southampton. This was an important match to be considered for both the teams as the series has been leveled by 2-2. Who ever wins the match will win the series. The first 2 matches was won by England and the next 2 was won by Pakistan. This shows that Pakistan team has fought back well in the series and have leveled the series. They look very confident as they have won the previous 2 games of the series. England will also be having some good plans in this match as they had lost previous 2 games and would have come up with new strategy. England won the toss and elected to bat first.
The England batting innings was opened by the openers Andrew Strauss and Steve Davies. The start was very good as their run rate was around 6 runs per over. Steve Davies got out in the 6th over of the innings by edging the ball which straight away went to the keepers gloves. Paul Collingwood contributed some useful runs to the team. On the other hand Eoin Morgan played extra-ordinarily and scored his century which helped the team to come out of bad situation. With his help, England scored a very good total of 256 runs with the loss of 6 wickets. Eoin Morgan was unbeaten scoring 107 runs from 101 deliveries that included 8 fours and a six. Shoaib Akthar took 3 wickets with an economy rate of 4 runs per over. Pakistan needed 257 runs to win the match from 50 overs with 10 wickets on hand.
Kamran Akmal and Mohammad Hafeez were the openers for the Pakistan team. They played some good cricket and put up a first wicket partnership of 63 runs. After the fall of Mohammad Hafeez, Asad Shafiq came in to bat and departed without scoring a run. Pakistan team started to struggle a lot after the fall of Kamran Akmal which resulted in loosing of wickets in regular intervals. By 37 overs, Pakistan team lost all its wickets and scored a total of just 135 runs on board. Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann took 3 wickets each respectively. Man of the match was Eoin Morgan and the Man of the Series was Andrew Strauss.
LinkWithin
