Ireland vs Pakistan | First ODI | 18th Aug - 2016

Ireland vs Pakistan | First ODI | 18th Aug - 2016

It was a one-sided affair at The village, Dublin, where Ireland met Pakistan for the first of the two ODIs. Although the format changed, it didn’t matter to Pakistan as they went on to comfortably win the match by a huge margin of 255 runs.

The Ireland skipper, William Porterfield, won the toss and invited the opposition to bat first on a pretty good looking wicket. Surprising call that from the home captain and the Pakistanis batsmen proved his decision completely wrong as they went on to amass 337 runs on the board.

It was a stunning knock from Pakistan’s opener Sharjeel Khan (152) that set the tempo for such a massive total. First with Mohammad Hafeez and then with Babar Azam, the opener put together two sizeable partnerships to help Pakistan get past the 200-run mark. In both the partnerships, Sharjeel was the major contributor as he scored more than double the runs of the two batsmen combined. He simply tortured the Irish bowling attack and thrashed them to all the parts of the ground. In one over of Peter Chase (who had a horrible match), the opener struck 3 mammoth sixes and a boundary to pull off 23 runs in one over.

The hosts then made a comeback as their bowlers struck twice in back-to-back overs to get rid of Sharjeel and the dangerous Sarfraz Ahmed. However, that didn’t slow down the rate of scoring from the visitors. Thanks to the quickfire knocks from Shoaib Malik (57 off 37 balls) and the debutant, Mohammad Nawaz, Pakistan were able to reach 337 in the allotted 47 overs.

With a daunting target of 338 to chase, the hosts were never in the game as they kept losing wickets at regular intervals. Initially, it was Umar Gul, who destroyed the Irish top-order by taking 3 important wickets, which included the dismissal of Porterfield and Kevin O’Brien. After that, it was Imad Wasim, who simply ran through the lower-order of Ireland. The left-arm spinner took 5 out of the last 6 wickets that fell and finished with his maiden five-wicket haul in ODIs. 
As a result of his devastating spell (5-14), Ireland were bowled out for a paltry total of 82 and they eventually lost the match by 255 runs.