Yuvraj blitz leaves series squared

Cricket365
January 29, 2013

A swashbuckling half-century from batsman Yuvraj Singh powered India to victory in Friday's second and final Twenty20 International against Pakistan at the Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Visiting opener Nasir Jamshed and captain Mohammad Hafeez did their utmost to collectively upstage Yuvraj, but ultimately came up short in a result that left the series squared one-all.

Triumphant at the toss again, and once more in favour of bowling first, Hafeez might have questioned his decision after India amassed an impressive 192 for five on the back of Yuvraj's blitz.

The hard-hitting left-hander struck a whopping seven sixes – three of them consecutively off the bowling of trumpcard spinner Saeed Ajmal – en route to the highest score of his T20I career.

Singh's vigil spanned as many as 72 runs, needed a mere 36 deliveries, and delivered almost two thirds of a 97-run alliance for the fourth wicket alongside skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The duo were tremendous in tandem, accruing a run-rate in excess of 13 for one delivery more than seven overs, and largely rendered the success of seamer Umar Gul's four-wicket haul null and void.

Openers Jamshed and Ahmed Shehzad ensured Pakistan's daunting chase a solid start en route to 41 and 31 respectively. Their departures within six deliveries of each other, however, left a lot of work for the middle order to manage.

Hafeez cherished fleeting support from the talented Umar Akmal and Shahid Afridi, but really the tourists' pursuit rested squarely on the shoulders of their skipper, who pushed himself down to number four this time around.

Fast bowler Ashok Dinda's return to the attack for the death overs, though, soon brought the end of Hafeez's 55-run, 26-ball stay – and cut short wicketkeeper-batsman Kamran Akmal's hopes of orchestrating an attacking cameo.

Effectively leading a three-man seam attack marginally hampered by Bhuvneshwar Kumar's inconsistent length and Ishant Sharma's shoddy line, Dinda churned out yorkers on a regular basis to stifle the opposition's closing throes. The spin department, meanwhile, enjoyed the return of Ravichandran Ashwin, who sent down an economical allotment.

Yuvraj beat Dinda to the Man of the Match award, while Hafeez was named Player of the Series – thanks to back-to-back half-centuries. A series tie was arguably a fitting result for the renewed bilateral ties between the political and cricket rivals, who will soon meet for three ODIs, the first of which gets underway in Chennai on Sunday.