Watch the highlights of Australia vs Pakistan 9th Match Benson & Hedges World Series Cup 1981/82 - Benson & Hedges World Series Cup one-day international tournament of the 9th ODI match played between Pakistan and Australia at Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne in 09th January 1982.
Zaheer Abbas' valuable 84 before A superb bowling from Imran Khan, Sikander Bakht, Ijaz Farih and a fine fielding display helped to Pakistan comprehensive 25-run victory over Australia, despite a fighting knock from Allan Border's unbeatean 75 and move to top of the points table in the ninth match of a Benson and Hedges World Series Cup.
* Zaheer Abbas became the first player to score a fifty or more runs without a boundary in One-day international cricket history.
PAKISTAN scored 218/6 (50 Overs) with top scorer by Zaheer Abbas 84 (113) and Mudassar Nazar 40 (80)
Australia best bowler by Jeff Thomson 2/55 (10) and Terry Alderman 1/37 (10)
AUSTRALIA scored 193 for all-out (49 Overs) with top scorer by Allan Border 75 not out (85) and Graeme Wood 38 (77)
Pakistan best bowler by Ijaz Faqih 2/34 (10) and Sikander Bakht 2/33 (8)
This match reported by Brian Mossop (Third Party Reference from SMH)
Australia will have to make the finals of the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup the hard way after crashing in the match against Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Pakistan, sent in to bat on a flat and unresponsive wicket, scored 218-6 off their 50 overs and then bundled Australia out for 193 in 49 overs to win by 25 runs.
But if the result was a surprise in view of an unbeaten 75 by Allan Border and a corner-turning 35 by Greg Chappell, it was a credit to the all-round performance of the Pakistanis. Zaheer Abbas put his team on the road with a splendid 84 that included partnerships of 69 with Mudassar Nazar (40) and 90 with Javed Miandad. Fine fielding also contributed to four costly Australian run outs.
Bruce Laird (4), Rick Darling (5), Dennis Lillee (8) and Geoff Lawson (1) were victims of Pakistan's sharpness in the field —although Darling and .Lawson both helped by falling.
The Australians will probably have to win all of their remaining four matches if they hope to scrape into the rich limited over finals series. They are on the bottom of the table with four points from six matches, while the Pakistanis have hit the front with eight points from seven games to lead from the West Indies who have six points from five matches.
Australia take on the first of their difficult task tomorrow when they come up against the West Indies at the MCG. And while Terry Alderman did not exactly strike fear into the Pakistan batsmen — he took 1-37 off his 10 overs — the West Australian seam bowler will be missing from tomorrow's clash. He was ruled out after needing an X-ray for a bruised foot during the Pakistan game, and has been replaced in the squad by Mick Malone, the West Australian medium-pacer who played his only Test match against England in 1977.
The only humour for the Australians on a day that belonged almost entirely to Pakistan came when Chappell was given the bird — a real live duck — as he walked in to bat.
The mottled brown duck was dropped over the fence as the Australian captain walked through the gate with Australia in a reasonable position at 41-2. But Chappell, who had five ducks in his previous seven innings as he experienced the worst slump of his long career, wasted no time showing the crowd of 18,039 that he has lost his appetite for poultry.
While the real duck waddled around the arena just inside the railings, before being caught and removed by a policeman. Chappell put his head down and thumbed his nose at his critics. Playing some of the shots that made him one of the world's top batsmen, the skipper took the Pakistan attack by the neck in a brief but determined bid to play himself back to form. Looking confident, Chappell batted for 78 minutes and hit one of the eight boundaries of the Australian innings before playing forward to Ejaz Faqih and being beaten by the spin.
But Chappell, who admitted after the match that Australia are behind the eight ball in the race for the finals, was equally realistic about today's innings.
"One swallow doesn't make a summer," Chappell said, maintaining the bird theme of the day. The Pakistanis recovered from a bad start--they lost opener Mansoor Akhtar (5) in the fourth over to be 10 — with Zaheer leading the way.
The bespectacled vice-captain shared an even-time partnership of 69 with Mudassar as the Australian bowlers laboured in conditions that have become the norm for pacemen in recent weeks.
Jeff Thomson, preferred to Bruce Yardley to give Australia a four-pronged pace attack, broke through in his second over when he had Mudassar trapped lbw.
Although Thomson finished with two wickets, he was also the the most expensive of the Australian bowlers, conceding 55 runs off his 10 overs in a game in which wickets are of far less importance than runs.
Zaheer and Miandad were together for only 76 minutes and kept the stand ticking over with intelligent running. The Pakistanis cracked only eight boundaries throughout the innings, and Zaheer's 84 did not include one.
At 169-2 in the 41st over, the Pakistanis had a big total at their mercy, But a slump that saw four wickets fall for 30 runs kept the score down. But the Australians were always behind the target of 4.38 runs per over, and in spite of Border, who shared a partnership of 61 in 46 minutes with the revitalised Chappell,' run outs eventually cost them all chances of overhauling the Pakistan total.
Zaheer Abbas named Player of the match for his valuable 84 off 113-balls without a boundary.
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