Spencer Johnson produced the best ever figures by an Australian fastman in a men’s Twenty20 international as he powered his side to a 13-run win over Pakistan.

With Australia defending 9-147 at the SCG on Saturday night, Johnson took five for 26 with the ball, putting Pakistan all out for 134 and helping the hosts to an unassailable 2-0 lead.

Johnson’s win made him only the sixth bowler in history to take five wickets in a match for Australia in T20s, and quickly overtook James Faulkner’s 5-27 from 2016 as the best.

What made the performance even more remarkable was that Johnson’s first over went wicketless and lasted 12 runs, as he sprayed a ball to first slip and gave away five wide to the fine leg boundary. But from then on, the left-armer delivered his first-ever white-ball five-wicket haul at the domestic or international level.

Johnson removed Muhammad Rizwan (16 runs) and Salman Agha (0) with successive balls, leaving Pakistan at 4-44, before Usman Khan (52) and Irfan Khan (37) launched a comeback. The pair scored 58 in short order for the fifth wicket, with Usman hitting Adam Zampa (2-19) inside out over cover for six and four more boundaries.

It was then up to Johnson to perform again, getting Usman caught on the pull shot for 52 before Abbas Afridi was also covered in the same over. Zampa then dismissed Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah, both for ducks, as the tourists teetered on the edge.

Pakistan managed to reduce the equation to 24 off the last two overs and 16 needed off the last six balls. But Haris Rauf (2) was exhausted when he tried to get back, with the tourists needing 15 out of 4.

Earlier, Australia squandered a red-hot start from Matt Short (32 from 17) and Jake Fraser-McGurk (20 from nine). The pair scored 47 runs from the first 15 deliveries, but the hosts added only 100 more runs from the next 105 balls of the innings.

Australia hit as many boundaries in those first 2.3 overs as they did in the rest of the innings, with the pair both pulling the ball over the leg-side rope. The game changed when McGurk was caught trying to jump and uppercut Rauf, and Josh Inglis was caught behind for a duck two balls later.

From there, wickets fell regularly as Pakistan slowed the pace of the ball, and Rauf finished with figures of 4-22 to take his wicket tally for the tour to 15. Aaron Hardie smashed 28 runs off 23 balls before being dismissed by Abbas Afridi.

While his heroics were enough to give Pakistan a 2-1 victory in the ODI series, they will leave Australia without series success in the shortest format after Monday’s third T20 in Hobart.