USA Team Beats Pakistan In T20 Cricket World Cup Dallas Drama

“All that matters is winning,” said J.R.Ewing in a famous episode of Dallas. That’s exactly what the USA Cricket team did in Texas on a perfect sunny morning, about an hour’s drive from Southfork Ranch. They beat 2009 winners Pakistan at the Grand Prairie Stadium in the T20 Cricket World Cup in front of more than 6,000 captivated fans. Not only that, they did it in a thrilling super over after both teams made 159 in their 20 overs.

Cricket won’t be challenging for primetime viewing figures just yet in the world’s biggest sporting market, but the hosts’ victory against one of the giants won’t do any harm in spreading the message. This Cricket World Cup is bringing the international game back to its original home with a bang.

The U.S. are placed 19^th in the T20 rankings, only above the United Arab Emirates. This win over the sixth-ranked team in the world will cause shock waves in South Asia where the game is huge, but also might have more than a ripple effect on the game in the States.

The U.S. proudly sits top of Group A with two wins from two matches after their equally thrilling win over Canada on Saturday evening in the tournament opener. In both matches, the star batsman was Aaron Jones. Born in Queens but showing the striking power of his Barbadian heritage, Jones managed to strike two more sixes against a quality Pakistan attack to add to his ten against the Maple Leafers just as it seemed his team had let things slip.

The game then went into a tiebreaker of one over each. Jones profited from a wayward over by Pakistan’s star bowler, Mohammad Amir, to get the States up to a competitive 18. Amir had bowled a superb 19^th over during the main game to drag his team to the brink of victory, but he fell apart in the shootout with a total of seven wides. When it came to Pakistan’s turn to chase 19, they looked mentally shot by events and fell short by six.

The Americans have been involved in the two most exciting contests of the T20 World Cup so far. Considering they had never played a T20 international before 2019, this is a sensational start and will surely assist in stirring the money pot of cricket investors who are already pouring millions into the game in the U.S. The only way to improve is to beat the best and that’s exactly what Monank Patel’s team have done here.

“Beating Pakistan is a big achievement,” said Patel. “It’s a big day for Team USA. Not just for USA, for the USA cricket community too.” He could be right.

The U.S. were on it from the start, sending back the third-best batsman in this format, Mohammad Rizwan, to the pavilion with a brilliant Steven Taylor slip catch off Saurabh Netravalkar. The Green Tigers stumbled to 26 for 3 under pressure from some sharp fielding and simply couldn’t rotate the strike. Shadab Khan and skipper Babar Azam managed to flick the switch to accelerate and threatened to take control before the wickets tumbled again.

Netravalkar was the standout bowler with figures of 2 for 18 off his four overs and he was courageous enough to bowl the super over. His full-time job is a principal engineer at Oracle and he showed total control of bowling mechanics here. Nosthusha Kenjige was also superb, taking three for 30 and bagging the crucial wicket of Shadab for 40.

The U.S. looked to be cruising to their target of 160 with skipper Patel scoring a fine half-century in partnership with Andries Gous, the highly rated South African-born batsman who kept Jones company in the blitz against Canada. Both were dismissed within six balls when almost 50 was still needed and the scoring rate subsequently dried up.

When 15 was needed off the last over and then 12 off the last three balls, the match was suddenly Pakistan’s to lose. Jones’s maximum and Nitish Kumar’s boundary off the last ball to level the scores ensured the drama of the tiebreaker. Babar was furious at seamer Haris Rauf for not finding the right length, just one example of the irritation and lack of control that spread like wildfire in the ranks of the 2022 runners-up. Pakistan’s chances of progress are now in deep peril as they prepare for the monumental match with India on June 9.

This U.S. team believe in themselves and their ecstasy and team spirit at the end of the match was clear. “I wouldn’t call it an upset if we beat Pakistan or India. I will just say that we played better cricket on the day. It is a game of cricket. The bigger teams can lose as well,” said Jones before the best cricketing week of his life.

The American cricket dream is alive and well. Now they can prepare for the best team in the world, India, with a much bigger audience in New York on Wednesday. They couldn’t, could they?