One of the pillars of Pakistan's batting, Mohammad Rizwan played a well-calculated knock against Canada in the 22nd match of the ongoing ICC Men's T20 World Cup to help his side get their first win on board.
Rizwan scored a run-a-ball 53* comprising two fours and a six to take Pakistan over the line in the 18th over of the game.
Notably, Rizwan's fifty helped him to equal Rohit Sharma as the most fifty-plus scores as an opener in T20Is (30). Rohit has 30 fifty-plus scores in the shortest format of the game as an opener and now Rizwan has joined him at the top.
Rizwan has aggregated 30 fifty-plus scores in 71 T20I innings, whereas Rohit Sharma has amassed the same number of fifty-plus scores in 118 innings.
Babar Azam (28 fifty-plus scores) and David Warner (27 fifty-plus scores) are third and fourth on the list respectively.
Rizwan's match-winning half-century also helped him to equal Babar Azam. Rizwan now has the joint-most half-centuries (5) for Pakistan in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup history alongside his captain Babar.
However, during the course of his knock against Canada, Rizwan also notched up an undesired record. Rizwan became the batter to score the slowest fifty (in terms of balls) in the history of the marquee tournament.
The wicketkeeper-batter consumed 52 balls to reach his half-century to scale the unwanted milestone. The record earlier belonged to David Miller. Miller took 50 balls to score a match-winning half-century against Netherlands in the ongoing World Cup in New York.
Meanwhile, Pakistan have climbed to the third spot in Group A after their win over Canada. They now have two points to their credit and their net run rate (NRR) has also improved drastically. Their net run rate is 0.191 which is lesser than that of the USA (0.626) and India (1.455).
