Rohit Sharma’s Team India completed the revenge by beating Pakistan by five wickets in their first match of the Asia Cup 2022 at the Dubai International Stadium on Sunday. India’s star all-rounder Hardik Pandya was named Man of the Match for his exceptional performance with the bat and with the ball. Hardik claimed three wickets and delivered a winning punch with the bat as well. He scored 33 runs in just 17 balls to help India win the game with two balls to spare. It is most likely that India will face Pakistan again next Sunday in Super 4.
#INDvsPAK: ___ ______ __ 308 ___ ___ _________ __ ____ ____, _______ ___ ___ 5 _____ __ ____, _______ ___ __ ____ _____ __ ___ __ ___ @preetiddahiya @MohammadKaif #HardikPandya @shoaib100mph pic.twitter.com/uiSHRjd29T
— Zee News (@ZeeNews) August 28, 2022
After the match in an exclusive interaction with Zee News, former Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Akhtar made a shocking statement where he said that both India and Pakistan wanted to lose the match.
“Both the teams have played silly cricket today. It was as if both India and Pakistan do not want to win the match. I can not understand some strange decisions taken by both captains. Rohit Sharma and Babar Azam were in a competition of who will play more silly cricket. The first decision was to drop Rishabh Pant. Babar took a mind-boggling decision to play Iftikhar Ahmed at number four,” Akhtar said during an interaction with Zee News.
Ravindra was promoted up the order in the match against Pakistan where he scored 35 runs in 29 balls with the help of two boundaries and two maximums. Many eyebrows were raised after watching Jadeja come out to bat at number four. Suryakumar Yadav who was supposed to bat at number four is coming into the series on the back of the century, however, cricket experts believe that the decision was taken in order to keep the right-hand left-hand combination on the pitch.
“Then Rohit sent Ravindra Jadeja above, Suryakumar Yadav. He is SIR Jadeja, not sir Don Bradman. He only scored run-a-ball. We also made the same mistake. We sent Shahada Khan over Asif Ali. In the end, all I want to say is both the teams tried their level best to lose the match. Overall, it was a bad game of cricket today,” Akhtar added.
