His wicket was Afridi’s 86th in as many matches, beating countryman Saeed Ajmal (85 wickets in 64 matches) as the highest wicket-taker in all Twenty20 cricket.
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Woakes had finished well with the bat, and did likewise with the ball.
Jason Roy was first to go when, after hitting Sohail Tanvir over mid-off, he clogged the next ball straight into the hands of mid-on. Afridi’s frenetic 24 from a barely believable eight (legitimate) deliveries, including successive sixes suddenly made Pakistan favourites for the victory. Eoin Morgan and his team have displayed positive, attacking intent and that is what earned them the rewards even yesterday, where they beat their opponents by 14 runs.
It was an impressive performance by England considering they rested master blaster Jos Buttler and dependable Joe Root, opting instead to give new players a chance.
Liam Plunkett played a significant part too, recovering after conceding 15 runs in his first over to end up with three for 33 – and take his tally to six wickets in the past two days, in only his second and third Twenty20 caps and first since 2006.
England were soon in the wickets, though, Reece Topley having Sarfraz Ahmed (1) caught in the deep by Plunkett before the seamers switched roles to dismiss Mohammad Hafeez (7), Plunkett had Rafatullah (16) caught by Billings, and Stephen Parry bowled Mohammad Rizwan (6).
Captian Afridi took both openers out in his first spell.
Afridi’s words were echoed by Pakistan’s bowling coach Mushtaq Ahmed who blamed poor fielding and lack of fitness for his team’s Twenty20 series loss against England.
“We got into a position where we should have won the game more comfortably – we were not at our best with bat or ball, but we did enough at the right times and fair play to Chris for standing up when it mattered in that last over”. Afridi came in though and played as he can and that put a lot of pressure on us. England’s effort petered out until Woakes hit 13 of 14 runs off Wahab Riaz’s final over. Afridi’s knock included three sixes of one Chris Woakes over but he fell on the last ball of the same over. Hopefully today we did that. “I think that shows what a good squad we are now”.
Yet Afridi has a reputation as a game-changer in limited overs cricket and he very almost pulled off another improbable masterstroke. England have only four more games – including this – before they must select the side for the World T20.
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“It was a good game of cricket, there are some areas we already discussed with the coaches that we should improve as quickly as possible”.
