February 24, 2011

ICC World Cup 2011 updates: Day 5

On the day 5 of the ICC World Cup 2011, Pakistan and Kenya faced each other at Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium, Hambantota, Sri Lanka. Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat first.

Pakistan opened the batting innings with its openers Mohammad Hafeez  and Ahmad Shahzad. The start was very poor and Kenyans looked dominant. In first 6.5 overs, Pakistan struggled a lot and scored only 12 runs and lost its openers. After this fall, Kamran Akmal partnered with Younus Khan and put up a partnership of 88 runs that gave some boost to other players in the team. After the break of this partnership, few more good partnerships added much of score to the total. Kamran Akmal, Younus Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq and Umar Akmal  scored half centuries. After completing 50 overs, Pakistan landed up scoring a magnificent 317 runs in total for the loss of 7 wickets. Thomas Odoyo took 3 wickets for Kenya.

Kenya needed 318 runs to win the match. But this was an very difficult target as the opponents are one of the strongest teams in the world. Kenyans started off good but with lesser run rate than the required rate. First wicket fell in 1st ball of the 10th over, this shows that they were in a situation such that they had to start scoring because of the asking rate that kept on increasing. After the fall of 1st wicket, Kenya started loosing wickets in regular intervals. Only Collins Obuya showed some resistance to the Pakistani bowlers and some good knocks. He scored 47 runs that included 3 fours and 3 sixes. But the Captain Shahid Afridi bowled well  and took 5 wickets in his 8 over spell and more over his economy rate was just 2 runs per over. In 33.1 overs, Kenya lost all its 10 wickets and ended up scoring 112 runs.

Pakistan won the match by 205 runs. Man of the match went to Umar Akmal for his brilliant batting performance where he scored 71 runs in just 52 deliveries and he took a catch and one run-out.

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