Pakistan narrowly in front as rain stops play

Pakistan navigated their way to 119/3 in 27 overs before the heavens opened at Edgbaston, sitting 19 runs ahead of South Africa on the DLS Method.

Babar Azam (31) and Shoaib Malik (16) are the men at the crease, responsible for steering the Pakistanis beyond the par score without further loss before the rain.

The match has until 10:26pm BST to resume, so the South Africans will be hoping the weather clears or they will fall to their first defeat of the tournament, making Sunday’s clash against India a do-or-die affair.

On six occasions before Wednesday, AB de Villiers had been bowled in One-Day Internationals without scoring. He had never gone first ball, though. De Villiers getting a duck was improbable. Getting a golden duck was almost impossible.

But Imad Wasim turned probability on its head to send South Africa’s finest on his way after just one ball and de Villiers’s team crumbled at Edgbaston after choosing to bat in a crucial Group B ICC Champions Trophy 2017 match. The duo of Wasim (2 for 20 in eight overs) and Hasan Ali (3 for 24 in eight overs) led a charged-up Pakistan bowling attack to keep South Africa to 219 for 8, with David Miller (75 not out in 104 balls) waging an almost solitary battle.

Miller held one end up even as wickets fell all about him, staying through till the end after coming in during the 15th over and giving the innings some substance. He couldn’t be his normal boundary-blasting self partly due to the situation of the match and partly due to the quality and intensity Pakistan’s bowlers maintained, but he did his job magnificently.

This was the third match played on this pitch in less than a week, and perhaps that played a part in the ball coming on slower than it had for the other two games. There was nothing tired about Pakistan, though.

Pakistan replaced the injured Wahab Riaz with Junaid Khan, while Fakhar Zaman was handed an ODI debut in place of Ahmed Shehzad. But the entire XI looked transformed from the side that lost to India by 124 runs (DLS method) on Sunday.

The innings began with Quinton de Kock and Hashim Amla laying a good platform, before Amla was trapped plumb in front by Wasim in the ninth over to make it 40 for 1. Faf du Plessis and de Kock were then kept quiet with the spin duo of Wasim and Mohammad Hafeez in operation. Hafeez took just three overs to strike, getting de Kock lbw, once again palpably in front for a fairly quiet 33 that came off 49 balls. Hafeez would have struck sooner if he had opted to review a similar shout against de Kock in his previous over, but as it turned out, that non-review didn’t cost Pakistan much.

Then came the de Villiers duck, the batsman reaching out to a wide delivery but only thick edging it to point. From 60 for 1 before de Kock fell, South Africa was at 118 for 6 in 29 overs, with the cream of the top order gone. Du Plessis chopped Hasan on, and both JP Duminy and Wayne Parnell got excellent deliveries from the same bowler. Duminy was sucked into a drive that kissed his edge and went to slip, while Parnell went first ball, a beauty beating him completely to take out the stumps.

Miller and Chris Morris put on 47 runs to save the innings, but there were no easy runs to be had. In the 13.3 overs they were together, the only boundary was a swept four by Morris. Morris was reprieved when he had his stumps splattered by Junaid thanks to the bowler overstepping, but his customary big hits never came and he was eventually sent back by Junaid for 28 off 45.

Kagiso Rabada then followed in Morris’s footsteps in giving them both something to bowl at, showing composure and elegance in a 48-run stand that continued to shore up South Africa’s total. The running was more urgent between Rabada and Miller with the overs dwindling, but the boundaries were still scarce. After the 40th over, the first boundary came in only the 48th, though Miller did then hit a few big ones in the last two overs.