With all gates being close for South Africa, Pakistan has a chance of making it to the semi-finals in case England happen to win over New Zealand. In case New Zealand win, the semi-finalists would be the two teams which beat Pakistan in the super eight stage. Coming to the match, the pitch never seemed to favor the batsmen when both Pakistan and South Africa had a bowler in their team who could scalp 4 wickets. Or else, a total of 147 is hard to defend. This is for the 2nd time that Pakistan have ousted South Africa from T20 world cup.
Last time year, Pakistan had knocked off South Africa (who were until then unbeaten) in the semi-finals of the tournament en route to their successful campaign in England. Looking at the scorecard, After Kamran Akmal's stint at the top, Pakistan had to wait until the entry of Umar Akmal to see their scoreboard ticking once again. It was Umar Akmal's 51 runs along with a 61 run partnership with Shahid Afridi which laid the platform for a decent score on a bowler friendly pitch which went on to become a winning total for them. Shahid Afridi's 30 runs from 16 balls should also not go unnoticed.
Coming to the batting of the South Africans, initial blows from Asif and Abdul Razzaq was more than enough for viewers to come to conclusion of the match. If not for AB deVilliars, no other batsmen really had something to talk about. In the end, South Africa lost equal number of wickets as Pakistan but fell 11 runs short of what Pakistan could put up on the scoreboard. Now, all that Pakistan would want to happen is that England
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