Australia 118 for 3 (Stoinis 61*, Inglis 27, Afridi 1-14) beating Pakistan 117 all out (Babar 41, Hardie 3-21, Zampa 2-11) with 7 wickets

Pakistan’s bright start

Pakistan came out with clear intentions after showing very little of it in the previous match as they tried to chase down Australia. Sahibzada Farhan fell early, but what Pakistan were trying to do was clear: take advantage of the Powerplay. Even Babar, usually a slow starter, found the boundary from the first ball and continued in that spirit. Haseebullah Khan was a bit lucky, his edges found the boundary, but that too was the result of hard flashing. The result saw Pakistan race to 58 – their highest powerplay score in an innings against Australia.

Zampa’s sorcery

Zampa’s impeccable control and skill make him little less than a wizard in this format. For Pakistan today, he was also their torturer; he played with batters at will while varying the pace, line and variations, leaving the batters constantly questioning.

It took him just five balls before he ensured Haseebullah’s luck ran out and the flash came outside off stump at third. In his third over he put an end to Babar’s entertaining knock, adjusted the flight of his delivery as he saw the batsman running across the wicket and cleared his stumps.

Even when he wasn’t taking wickets, he was piling on the pressure at the other end. Pakistan captain Salman Ali Agha played five point balls against him before being put out of his misery by Aaron Hardie in the next round, and his figures of 4-0-11-2 did not flatter him in the least.

Pakistan’s balance

It’s hard to expect batters to play risky cricket when you simply don’t have enough batters. Pakistan had made it clear to the team from the start that they expected aggression, even from players for whom it does not come naturally. Usman Khan tends to take a few balls before he can launch, but he came off ball one wanting to dabble – even if no shot was ever fired. It never looked sustainable, as was evident when he chipped his fourth delivery, triggering a Pakistan collapse.

Every fall of a wicket was made all the more worrying for the visitors due to the extreme length of their tail; they effectively ran out of batters when the fifth wicket fell, and Abbas Afridi came out at number 7. It proved to be a problem for them in the second game too, and it remains a problem they have to find a way to to solve.

Australia gets on top of Haris – finally

A running theme in this series is Haris Rauf coming out and dominating the Australian batsman he finds at the other end. This was especially true for Glenn Maxwell, but Stoinis told Haris after the match that this was the only time “one of us” got Haris’ number.

And Stoinis did that in a fascinating way. At the end of the eighth over, Australia were 57 for 2, and Pakistan still believed they had time to introduce danger into the game. But on the ninth over he smashed Haris with two fours and two sixes off the first four balls, with the last six flying all the way out of the Bellerive Oval. It started a passage of play in which Stoinis plundered 45 off his next 12 deliveries, including a 25-run over off Shaheen Afridi. The next time, Abbas had Stoinis caught at deep square leg, but he had gone too far. Sixty-one runs came off the last 21 balls to close the match and the series.