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Pakistan's wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan has evolved as one of the Men in Green's best bets with the bat in white-ball cricket, particularly in the shortest format of the game. For two successive years, the right-handed batter topped the run-scoring charts in T20Is for Pakistan and also became the first willow-wielder to breach the 1,000-run mark in T20Is in a calendar year in 2021.
Rizwan has scripted several memorable victories for Pakistan in T20Is in the last couple of years. One of those satisfying victories for Rizwan came during last year's T20 World Cup in the UAE when Pakistan thrashed arch-rivals India by 10 wickets. Rizwan, along with his captain Babar Azam, took the Indian bowling attack apart in Dubai and rolled out a famous win for the Men in Green.
A victory like that often has enormous repercussions and for Rizwan, it made him a national hero. Things changed drastically for the right-handed batter, to an extent that no shopkeeper in Pakistan was ready to accept money from their superstar cricketer.
"When we won against India, that time, I thought it was only a match for me. It was because we won that game easily. But when I came to Pakistan, I realised how much it meant. Whenever I went to a shop, they won't take money from me. They would say, 'you go, you go. I won't take money from you!'" Rizwan told Mike Atherton during an interview with Sky Sports Cricket.
"People would say, 'everything is free for you here'. This is the love from all of Pakistan after that match," he added.
India exacted revenge for their disappointing defeat in 2021 when Virat Kohli's masterclass powered the Men in Blue to an emphatic win at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in the 2022 T20 World Cup.
