Pakistan captain Babar Azam applauded his side's comprehensive victory against India in the recently concluded T20 World Cup and was short of words while recalling the historic feat.
Pakistan made history by beating arch-rival India for the first time in a T20 World Cup event. The green shirts' 10-wicket win ended a decades-long defeat streak that began in 1992. Pakistan had lost all 12 of their previous World Cup matches against India. The two former champions clashed after more than two years in the 2021 T20 World Cup opening fixture at the Dubai International Stadium.
“I can’t explain that moment. We were not thinking about the past record, trying to stay in the present. The way we started and finished had a different feel and buzz to it.. and the response from fans was amazing too. We hadn’t registered a win (against India) in the World Cups and Allah helped us change that. It was a team effort. We had belief… there was no overconfidence,” said Babar in a PCB Podcast.
Pakistan pacer Shaheen Afridi was the star of the show, taking three for 31 from his four overs. Despite a valiant 57 from captain Virat Kohli, the Indians were not able to notch up an intimidating total on the scoreboard. Chasing 152 for victory, skipper Babar (68) and his ally Mohammad Rizwan (79) steered their team home with 13 deliveries to spare.
“We had put in the effort… we had dominated the World Cup. But unfortunately, we couldn’t win that match. We made mistakes as a team but we need to learn from it and deliver a better performance next time,” said Babar, who finishes with the year with 939 runs from 29 T20 Internationals," the 27-year old said.
“Doesn’t matter how you start when you finish well. We finished the year on an outstanding note. We played some positive cricket throughout the year and tried to leave an impact. We’ve had different Man of the Match contenders for every match. Unfortunately, we bowed out of T20 World Cup but we did learn from that defeat. We have had discussions on the mistakes and will try to improve day by day," he added.
“Talking about performances, Rizwan and Shaheen were brilliant. Hasan too. Youngsters like Abdullah, Wasim and Dhani have been impressive too. It’s a plus point for us and hopefully, we carry on the momentum. We had assigned roles to players and that led to better performances. I had the belief that we had match-winners in our team and the boys proved that. Thanks to the fans too and we hope to get a similar kind of support next year,” said the Lahore-born batter, who has scored 2,620 runs in T20Is.
