Pakistan wins the all-important match against South Africa - The 29th match of the World Cup was one of the most important matches for the Pool B as Pakistan met South Africa in the pool game. It was an important match for Pakistan as a win here would have made them almost sure for the top 4 teams else they would have to wait for other teams results. In this match after winning the toss South Africa decided to field first as rain was predicted and with the new rules it is always better to know the target.
Pakistan team was forced to bat first and batting first the openers gave their team a start of only 30 runs. The first wicket fell in the form of Ahmed Shehzad who was able to score only 18 runs. Sarfraz Ahmed and Younis Khan together stitched a partnership and tool their team to a score of 92 runs. Sarfraz Ahmed scored 49 runs before losing his wicket. Younis soon lost his wicket after scoring only 37 runs. Misbah-ul-Haq was the only exception who stayed on crease and played an innings of 56 runs to take his team to a total of 222 runs. The match was stopped by rain in the 41st over and the game was reduced to 47 overs per side. the new target set by D\L method for South Africa was 232 to be achieved in 47overs.
South African opener Quinton de Kock failed to start his innings well and lost his wicket in the 2nd ball that he faced. He went back without scoring a single run. Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis scored some important runs with Amla scoring 38 runs while Plessis scoring 27 runs. Despite of getting a solid start wickets started to fall as South Africans found them in trouble at 102/6. The middle order collapsed badly. AB de Villiers was the only batsman who scored 77 runs in 58 balls but the remaining team was unable to build on the innings and at the end lost all the wickets at 202 runs. Wahab Riaz, Mohammad Irfan and Rahat Ali took 3 wickets each as Pakistan won their all-important match. Sarfraz Ahmed was named as the man of the match.