Pakistan on the board as Rizwan keeps Super Eight hopes alive

inexperienced batters crumbled against pace for yet another low score at the T20 World Cup as Pakistan finally registered their first win Tuesday.

The four-pronged Pakistan pace attack, led by Mohammad Amir's impeccable figures of 2-13, restricted Canada for 7-106 with only opening batter Aaron Johnson showing aggression in his 44-ball knock of 52.

Mohammad Rizwan's unbeaten half-century (53 not out) anchored Pakistan, who lost to rival India on Sunday, to 3-107 in 17.3 overs for a commanding seven-wicket win.

"Good for us, we needed this win," Pakistan skipper Babar Azam said. "We started well with the bowling, in the first six overs (and) we know we had to be up to the mark."

Johnson sent early tremors in Pakistan's camp with his back-to-back boundaries off Shaheen Shah Afridi's first two balls of the match after Babar won the toss and elected to field in New York.

But Amir, who came out of retirement for the World Cup, hit the right areas straight away and buckled the batters as wickets continued to fall around Johnson.

Johnson, who was dropped on 44 by Fakhar Zaman at midwicket, hit four boundaries and brought up his half-century with his fourth six before he too was finally undone by Naseem Shah (1-24) in the 14th over.

Fast bowler Haris Rauf became the third quickest bowler to complete 100 wickets in men's T20 internationals when he had Shreyas Movva (2) caught behind and then found the outside edge of Ravinderpal Singh's bat in the same over to finish with 2-26.

"Definitely, it was a bit disappointing," Pakistan-born Canadian skipper Saad Bin Zafar said. "We wanted to play a positive brand of cricket and I think the wicket was not very helpful. It was difficult to bat early on and not a good toss to lose. We were about 25 to 30 runs short."

Pakistan's experiment with Saim Ayub as an opener in the World Cup for the first time didn't work out as the left-hander struggled to score six off 12 balls before he edged Dilon Heyliger (2-18) to wicketkeeper inside the batting Powerplay.

Rizwan and Babar (33) then had a 63-run stand before the Pakistan skipper banged his bat on the wicket in anger when he was out 25 runs short of victory trying to guide Heyliger to third man but couldn't beat the wicketkeeper.

Rizwan's run-a-ball half-century saw Pakistan over the line with Usman Khan (2no) hitting the winning runs with 15 balls to spare.

Pakistan, the 2022 runner-up, needs to beat Ireland in their last group game and also hope co-host United States lose both their remaining games against India and Ireland to have a chance of advancing from Group A on superior net run-rate.

The USA made a history by beating Pakistan in a Super Over in Dallas after defeating Canada in a high-scoring opening game of the tournament they are jointly co-hosting with the West Indies.

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