Heart still beating as fast as I’ve just bowled a 100 mph over, says Shoaib Akhtar after Pakistan win the last-over thriller

Pakistan faced a massive trail when they faced Afghanistan in the league game of World Cup 2019. The rivalry between these two countries has been quite intense in recent times and it was no different this time either. Had Pakistan lost this game, they’d have been nearly knocked out of the tournament. The team would have needed a lot of other results to go their way and they had to win their last league game at all costs. After this win, former cricketer Shoaib Akhtar was quite elated.

Just like they did in the game against India, Afghanistan weren’t to throw the towel in without putting a tough fight. Firstly, they did a good job with the bat on a track that wasn’t completely the best to bat on. Asghar Afghan and Najibullah Zadran led the charge as the team got to 227/9 in their quota of 50 overs.

In the chase, Pakistan faced a massive scare of losing the game. The troika of the Afghanistan spinners – Mohammad Nabi, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Rashid Khan were all over their batsmen. When the scoreboard read 142 runs, Pakistan already lost half their side and were in deep territories of trouble. Most of their match-winners with the bat were already back in the pavilion by this point in time and a loss seemed inevitable.

However, Imad Wasim put his hand up in this pressure situation. While he started off slowly, he made up for it later on with some big shots. 46 runs were required of the last five overs and one of these overs bowled by Gulbadin Naib went for 18 runs. That made things easy for Pakistan as they got over the line with two balls and three wickets to spare.

Heart still beating as fast as I’ve just bowled a 100 mph over, says Shoaib Akhtar

Shoaib Akhtar was thrilled after this emphatic victory. He took to Twitter to share his happiness and was all praise for Imad Wasim and Shaheen Afridi. While the former remained unbeaten on 49, the latter picked up a four-wicket haul.

“Heart still beating as fast as I’ve just bowled a 100 mph over. In the end, barely managed to cross the line. Imad took responsibility & won it in the end, Shaheen going strong. One step closer. We need to continue supporting Afghanistan cricket as Pakistanis. #PAKvsAFG #CWC19″ wrote Shoaib Akhtar in his tweet.