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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Khan, Ahmed spin Pakistan to victory inside three days

by

Sports Desk
32 days ago
20250120
West Indies Jomel Warrican, centre, who took seven wickets in the second innings, raises the ball to acknowledge the crowd during the day three of the first Test cricket match between Pakistan and West Indies in Multan, Pakistan, yesterday.

West Indies Jomel Warrican, centre, who took seven wickets in the second innings, raises the ball to acknowledge the crowd during the day three of the first Test cricket match between Pakistan and West Indies in Multan, Pakistan, yesterday.

Asim Tanveer

MUL­TAN, Pak­istan – Pak­istan’s spin­ning duo of Sajid Khan and Abrar Ahmed bam­boo­zled West In­dies’ bats­men to bowl their side to a com­pre­hen­sive 127-run vic­to­ry in­side three days at the Mul­tan Crick­et Sta­di­um on Sun­day.

Play­er-of-the-Match Khan grabbed five wick­ets and Ahmed snared four wick­ets and the pair over­shad­owed a ca­reer best bowl­ing per­for­mance by West In­dies leg spin­ner Jomel War­ri­can on a day that saw 17 wick­ets tum­ble.

War­ri­can’s su­perb 7-32, which saw him end with match fig­ures of 10-101, had ear­li­er in­sti­gat­ed a Pak­istan mid­dle-or­der col­lapse that re­sult­ed in them los­ing their last sev­en wick­ets for 48 runs af­ter they re­sumed on 109 for three at the start of the day.

War­ri­can struck with the day’s first de­liv­ery by hav­ing Saud Sha­keel caught at mid­wick­et by Justin Greaves and then Mo­hammed Rizwan edged him to first slip where he was caught by Kavem Hodge to make the score 113 for five.

The leg spin­ner al­so trapped Kam­ran Ghu­lam and No­man Ali lbw for 27 and nine re­spec­tive­ly and had Khan caught at back­ward point by skip­per Kraig Brath­waite, as Pak­istan were dis­missed for 157 in the morn­ing ses­sion, giv­ing West In­dies a chal­leng­ing 251 runs to win on a turn­ing pitch.

Khan made sure the con­test was ef­fec­tive­ly over by the lunch break, run­ning through the Windies’ top or­der and cap­tur­ing the first four wick­ets.

Brath­waite was the first to go af­ter scor­ing 12, caught at mid­wick­et as he tried to hit him over the in­field.

Kea­cy Car­ty made just six be­fore his in­tend­ed sweep lobbed in­to the air af­ter hit­ting his glove to give the wick­et­keep­er an easy catch and Kavem Hodge was bowled for a duck when Khan’s de­liv­ery out­side off stump turned back sharply to creep be­tween bat and pad, leav­ing the vis­i­tors 32 for three.

Open­er Mikyle Louis was al­so bowled for 13 as he charged down the track at the off spin­ner, be­fore No­mad Ali had Justin Greaves ad­judged lbw for six as the West In­dies limped to the break at 54 for five.

Al­ick Athanaze was the on­ly bright spark among the bat­ters, with his 55 be­ing the lone form of re­sis­tance against Pak­istan’s spin­ners.

The diminu­tive left-han­der shared a 41-run part­ner­ship with debu­tant Tevin Im­lach, to help frus­trate Pak­istan’s bowlers, if on­ly for a while.

Ahmed even­tu­al­ly broke the stand by hav­ing Im­lach caught be­hind for 14 with a de­liv­ery that pitched on mid­dle and spun away from him.

Athanaze brought up his fourth Test half cen­tu­ry off 49 balls soon af­ter, by dri­ving Ali through ex­tra cov­er for four.

The match end­ed in swift fash­ion soon af­ter though, with the West In­dies los­ing their last four wick­ets with­out a run be­ing added.

With the score on 123 for six, Kevin Sin­clair was un­done by a de­liv­ery from Ahmed that bounced steeply on him and re­sult­ed in him be­ing caught by Agha Salman at first slip for 10, and Gu­dakesh Motie was caught by the same field­er off the next ball bowled by Ahmed.

Athanaze’s re­sis­tance fi­nal­ly came to an end when he be­came Khan’s fifth wick­et, out lbw af­ter an hour and 40 min­utes at the crease, where he faced 68 balls and struck sev­en fours.

Ahmed then end­ed the match when he had War­ri­can lbw for a duck to give Pak­istan a 1-0 lead in the two-match Test se­ries.

The sec­ond Test bowls off on Jan­u­ary 25 at the same venue.

SUM­MARISED SCORES

PAK­ISTAN 230 & 157 in 46.4 overs (Shan Ma­sood 52, Muham­mad Hur­raira 29. Kam­ram Ghu­lam 27, Salman Agha 14; Jomel War­ri­can 7-32) vs

WEST IN­DIES 137 & 123 in 36.3 overs (Al­ick Athanaze 55, Tevin Im­lach 14, Kevin Sin­clair 10, Mikyle Louis 13, Kraigg Brath­waite 12; Sajid Khan 5-50, Abrar Ahmed 4-27).

(CMC)


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