RAWALPINDI: Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) team Friday stunned Rawalpindi by 15 runs in the third match of round one of the Cool & Cool Presents JAZZ National T20 Cup 2016 at Pindi Stadium.
Fawad Khan missed his century for FATA but his innings earned them an upperhand in the match which was later bolted by Asif Ali with his four wickets feat.
Electing to bat, FATA despite a mini collapse in the middle maintained its grip in the match by scoring 162 runs for five wickets. They player with an average of above eight runs an over and kept their rivals Rawalpindi below the asking rate, accept for the few moments when host town’s Zahid mansoor and Sohail Tanvir were at the crease.
Yasir Hameed and Fawad put up 43 runs coming as openers and after Yasir 16 was taken by Zulfiqar Babar, Fawad kept his cool only to see another three quick wicket fall at the other end. Mohammad Usman joined Fawad to bolster the score. Fawad took 51 balls to reach 94 runs studded with seven fours and eight mighty sixes. As Fawad left the crease after Tanvir for his only wickets of the match clean bowled him, Usman 31 and Aamer Yamin seven took the batting responsibilities till the end.
As Zulfiqar Babar claimed two wickets, Shadab Khan and Zahid Mansoor had one apiece.
In reply, Rawalpindi though had a good start but was not enough to provide strong footing to their chase. Mukhtar Ahmed and Awais Zia scored 18 and 23 runs respectively and together their partnership yielded 30 runs. Asif had both the openers. Mukhtar was the first to march back while Jamal Anwar and Umer Amin too followed suit with addition of nothing suitable to the total.
Zahid Mansoor tried to keep thing calm for the hosts but Asif Ali had Asif Ali for 10. Then Tanvir and Zahid played with caution but the damage done by Asif’s bowling was enough to provide FATA grip in the match. After Tanvir and Yasir Arafat were back, Shadab did his best to meet the demand of time and in an attempt to overcome the deficit of runrate, he was trapped run out and with that the recognised batting was over. Zulfiqar and Aitzaz Cheema remained not out from Rawalpindi side only to see their team lose by 15 runs.
As Asif Ali had four wickets, Mohammad Imran trapped two and Aamer Yamin got one.
