Fakhar's 127, Minhas-Nawaz's 94 and Shaheen's Last-Ball Six: Pakistan Chase Down 326 With Three Wickets in Hand

Pakistan chased down Sri Lanka's 326 with three wickets in hand, finishing the match in the most dramatic way possible: two runs were needed, seven wickets had fallen, and Minhas and Faheem had just been dismissed in quick succession. Shaheen Afridi ended it with a six. But framing this win purely as Fakhar Zaman's 127 would be a disservice to the cricket. Fakhar was out for 106, with 21 runs still needed. Alongside him stood Saad Baig's 74, a 94-run stand between Minhas and Nawaz, Haris Rauf's two late wickets, and Shaheen's contribution with both bat and ball. The win was built on the sum of these parts, not on one innings. The biggest turning point was not in Pakistan's batting but in Sri Lanka's final nine overs. At 41 overs Sri Lanka were 255/2; they finished on 325/8, losing six wickets and scoring only 70 runs in that closing stretch. Had those nine overs gone even at a normal rate, the target would have been around 350 and Pakistan's task far harder. Kamindu Mendis anchored Sri Lanka with 131 — his career-best ODI score, more than double his previous best. Yet it could not win the match, and that is the cruellest part of the result. Pavan Rathnayake made 77 and has had an outstanding series: 427 runs at 106.75. That average deserves a caveat, however: it is built on only four dismissals, so it is impressive but statistically fragile. Four innings is a small window into any batter. Shaheen Afridi did the most consequential work with the ball, removing both Kamindu Mendis and Dasun Shanaka — the phase in which Sri Lanka's momentum stalled. Haris Rauf took two late wickets, using the short ball. Minhas's left-arm spin, meanwhile, proved expensive; the report acknowledges this but never says how expensive. That asymmetry runs through the coverage: batting is quantified in detail, bowling is described only in adjectives. Readers cannot judge for themselves how much of the comeback was down to the ball, and must instead accept the writer's characterisation. Pakistan's innings began badly. They were 14/2, with Maaz out first and Babar Azam following. Babar's duck matters because he had gone nine innings without a half-century. When a side's most experienced batter falls for nought while chasing 326, the pressure is immediate. What followed is the least discussed part of the match. Saad Baig made 74 — his first international fifty, achieved hours before his 20th birthday. For a 19-year-old, that innings meant more than runs: it kept the scoreboard moving at 14/2, kept the innings alive, kept hope intact. Fakhar Zaman provided the momentum from the other end, reaching fifty off 52 balls and a hundred off 84. His 127 was the largest share of Pakistan's innings, and that is why every post-match conversation begins with him. There is another side to the innings, though, which should not be hidden. Fakhar was dropped three times — on 6, on 69 and on 106. Maheesh Theekshana put down the chance on 106, and notably Theekshana was the fielder who reprieved him twice. Had any one of those catches stuck, the shape of the match would have changed. This is not an attempt to diminish the innings — 127 is a large score at any level — but only to note that a century and a match-winning innings are not the same thing. After 14/2, Minhas and Nawaz put on 94. That stand brought Pakistan back into the contest. Minhas, 21, and Nawaz, 24, both young and both under pressure, did what the senior batters could not. It would be an overstatement, however, to say the partnership secured the game. It made a difficult chase manageable; the team still had to scramble to within two runs of the target. The closing equation tells the story: at one point Pakistan needed 46 from 30 balls. A 15-run over followed, reducing it to 31 from 24. Then Minhas fell, and after him Faheem — both dismissed with only two runs required. Seven wickets down, the pressure at its peak, Shaheen Afridi hit a six. Shaheen's contribution was twofold: with the ball he broke Sri Lanka's biggest stand, and with the bat he finished the match. Yet his full bowling figures are unavailable here — no overs, no economy, no final analysis. What is available is the fact that he dismissed Kamindu and Shanaka, and that Sri Lanka's scoring rate slowed during his spell. When a performance is asserted in prose but unsupported by numbers, the reader should retain the right to ask. This is where attribution matters. If the story is told only as Fakhar beating Sri Lanka, three things vanish: he was dropped three times; he was out at 106 with 21 still needed; and the match ended off the bat of a bowler who had earlier hauled his side back into it. The gap is not merely stylistic. Hero narratives cut both ways — they inflate a player in victory and then load the entire burden of defeat on the same shoulders. The more accurate accounting is distributed: Fakhar's 127, Baig's 74, the Minhas-Nawaz stand of 94, Shaheen's two key wickets and final six, Rauf's two late strikes, and Sri Lanka's six wickets for 70 at the death. One question is absent from every account of this match: four days earlier, Pakistan had been bowled out for 110. Four days later, the same side chased 326 with innings of 127 and 74 and a 94-run partnership. No explanation for that transformation appears anywhere in the available material — no player quotes, no captain's comments, no coach's assessment. For a match featuring a first international fifty on the eve of a 20th birthday, a 131, and three dropped catches, the silence is itself telling. It suggests the coverage was built from the scorecard rather than from the ground. On the series: this is a three-team competition that also includes England, though the points table, the other results and the remaining fixtures are not documented in the material available. Sri Lanka's lesson is the opposite of Pakistan's. Their strength showed at the top of the order; their weakness appeared in the last ten overs. Had they reached 300 for 4 from 255 for 2, the result would likely have been different. What should be remembered about this match is not simply that Fakhar made 127. It is that one side went from 255/2 to 325/8, the other went from 14/2 to 327, a 19-year-old made a fifty hours before his birthday, and a fast bowler ended it with a six.