Pakistan team made a great start in Asia Cup 2023. In this match played between Nepal and Pakistan, Pakistan team won against Nepal by a huge margin of 238 runs. In this match, Pakistan team won the toss and decided to bat first. Pakistan’s initial innings certainly faltered during the match, but Babar Azam batted brilliantly and put the match in the hands of the Pakistan team. Babar played an inning of 151 runs in 131 balls in this match. Babar Azam, who played a brilliant innings, was also chosen man of the match. In this match, Babar was well supported by Iftikhar Ahmed, who played a stormy innings of 109 runs in 71 balls with the help of 11 fours and 4 sixes. Babar Azam also scored the 19th century of his ODI career while playing the captaincy innings and with this he left behind Hashim Amla and Virat Kohli in the matter of scoring 19 centuries in the least number of innings. Thanks to the centuries of these two players, Pakistan scored 342 runs at the loss of 6 wickets in the first innings. Whereas Nepal team, which came to bat in the second innings, lost the match easily while batting very normally. In response to this big target, Nepal’s team got bundled out for only 104 runs. Not only this, no batsman from Nepal could even cross the 30-run mark. Sompal Kami scored the maximum 28 runs from the team. Apart from them, Arif Sheikh scored 26 and Gulshan Jha scored 13 runs. While from Pakistan, Shadab Khan got four and Shaheen Shah Afridi and Haris Rauf got two successes each.Babar Azam made a big statement after registering victory in this match. Babar Azam said, “This win will give us the confidence, India Pakistan will always bring high intensity, we will try our best.”
Babar added, “When I went in, the ball wasn’t coming on properly, so I was trying to build an innings with Rizwan. Then we had a different phase, sometimes Rizwan gave me confidence, sometimes I gave him belief. Iftikhar also played a great innings when he came on. When he came in, I told him to play his natural game and he was comfortable after 2-3 boundaries. A couple of overs we weren’t up to the mark, but the way our pacers started and then the spinners were brilliant.”
