Rotterdam 19 August : Pakistan overcame the early loss of both openers, Fakhar Zaman and Imam-ul-Haq as they defeated Netherlands with seven wickets with more than 16 extra overs in the second One-day International at Hazelaarweg here to take a commanding advantage of 2-0 in the series of three matches. After the demise of Fakhar Zaman and Imam-ul-Haq with 6 and 3 runs respectively and captain Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan and Agha Salman struck impressive half-centuries to surpass the hosts’ low score of 181 in only 33.4 hours on Thursday night.
Rizwan who appeared to be a little shaky of confidence at the time he was called in for batting, scored an unbeaten 82-ball score of 69 as he and captain Babar were tasked with the task of collecting runs in an efficient fashion.
While Riwan kept his cool, Salman who came at the demise of Babar Azam was a tense and agitated in his unbeaten score of 50, slamming the winning runs from 35 deliveries, topped with five boundaries as well as two sixes.
With the requirement of 12 to win the match, he scored 10 from the opening three balls of the 34th over.
In need of a six to get to 50th, he slammed Vivian Kingma to a lofty tally as Pakistan took the series.
Prior to that, having won the toss and choosing to bat first and bat first, the Dutch had a tough time with openers Vikramjit Singh (1) and Max O’Dowd (1) departing in the third and second overs, respectively.
The duo of Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah then reduced the hosts to 8/3 within four overs.
However, Bas de Leede (89) and Tom Cooper (66) played slow innings to lead the Netherlands to an impressive 186.
Brief score: Netherlands 186 in 44.1 overs (Bas de Leede 89, Tom Cooper 66; Haris Rauf 3/16, Mohammad Nawaz 3/42) lost to Pakistan 191/3 in 33.4 overs (Mohammad Rizwan 69 not out, Babar Azam 57, Agha Salman 50 not out; Vivian Kingma 2/32) by seven wickets.
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