LAHORE, 30 Sep: Phil Salt\u2019s 88 trumped Babar Azam\u2019s 87 for England to beat Pakistan in a Twenty20 on Friday and set up a series decider.
\nBoth openers carried their bats through the sixth match, and Salt\u2019s extra ruthlessness was a big reason why England won by eight wickets to even the series 3-3.
\nThey play the seventh and last match on Sunday at the same Gaddafi Stadium.
\nSalt smashed an unbeaten 88 off 41 balls, propelling a chasing England to 170-2 in just 14.3 overs.
\nBabar anchored Pakistan to 169-6 with an unbeaten 87 off 59 balls.
\nSalt\u2019s brutal batting in the powerplay led England to 82-1, the most runs ever conceded by Pakistan in the first six overs.
\nAlex Hales made 27 off 12 balls and added 55 runs with Salt. Then Dawid Malan and Ben Duckett combined with Salt to get England home with 33 balls to spare.
\nIn the absence of rested fast bowler Haris Rauf and an ill Naseem Shah, Pakistan\u2019s pace bowlers struggled to halt Salt\u2019s power-hitting.
\nSalt scored only 59 runs in the previous five games, but hit 13 fours and three sixes in a brutal display as hundreds of home team fans left Gaddafi in disappointment midway through England\u2019s run chase.
\nIt was a remarkable turnaround for the visitors after failing to chase down below-par totals in the last two games, losing by three runs at Karachi and by six runs at Lahore on Wednesday.
\nEarlier, Pakistan\u2019s top order struggled without the world\u2019s top ranked T20 batter Mohammad Rizwan, who was rested after scoring four half-centuries in the previous five games.
\nRizwan\u2019s replacement, wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Haris scored 7 on debut before slicing an easy catch to short third man off Richard Gleeson, who replaced the rested Chris Woakes.
\nShan Masood continued to struggleat No. 3 as he was trapped lbw by David Willey for a duck, and Haider Ali couldn\u2019t impress again by holing out in the deep on 18 off Sam Curran.
\nBabar held the innings together with Iftikhar Ahmed (31) and Mohammad Nawaz (12) as Pakistan made 99 runs in the latter half of its innings. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAHORE, 30 Sep: Phil Salt\u2019s 88 trumped Babar Azam\u2019s 87 for England to beat Pakistan in a Twenty20 on Friday and set up a series decider. Both openers carried their bats through the sixth match, and Salt\u2019s extra ruthlessness was a big reason why England won by eight wickets to even the series 3-3. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-201819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}