“Won’t call the result an upset”: Shahid Afridi admits Zimbabwe played top cricket from Ball 1 vs Pakistan in Perth

Zimbabwe played top cricket: The former captain reckons the opposition outplayed Pakistan at the Perth Stadium tonight.

Zimbabwe have stunned the global cricketing fraternity after defeating Pakistan by 1 run in ICC T20 World Cup 2022 Match 24 in Perth tonight.

While both Zimbabwean T20I victories against Pakistan have come in the last three matches between these two teams, the latest one is all the more special due to its presence in a World Cup Super 12 match.

A stunning victory for Zimbabwe has it in it to have a direct impact on Pakistan’s qualification for the semi-finals. In spite of Pakistan not having the best of T20I records in Australia, no one would’ve expected them to lose their first two matches in this World Cup.

Although their current 15-member squad was looking much better on paper, these cricketers not converting their potential into performance has left plentiful Pakistan fans in shock.

Shahid Afridi admits Zimbabwe played top cricket from Ball 1 vs Pakistan in Perth

Chasing a 131-run target, Pakistan lost wickets from the word go. Babar Azam (4) and Mohammad Rizwan (14), Pakistan’s most-reliable batters in this format, were the first two batters to be dismissed.

Despite his superior T20I record in this country, Iftikhar Ahmed (5) couldn’t make it count on Thursday becoming the third Pakistani batter to get out in the first half of their innings.

Batter Shan Masood (44) and all-rounder Mohammad Nawaz (22) showed some resistance but their respective strike rates of 115.78 and 122.22 weren’t enough for a team victory. Frankly speaking, failing to seal a low-scoring run-chase against a comparatively weaker opposition isn’t worthy of any sort of justifications.

It is due to all these reasons that former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi has refused to term this loss as an “upset”. Afridi took to social media platform Twitter to bring to light Zimbabwe’s “top cricket” from the first ball. Congratulating Zimbabwe, Afridi admitted that their performance was a tutorial on how to defend a low innings score on a batting wicket.

A dejected Pakistani cricket team will next face Netherlands at the same venue on Sunday.