Pakistan might have opened their T20 World Cup 2021 campaign with an emphatic win over India, but skipper Babar Azam doesn’t want to go overboard and advised his troops to stay focused going ahead in the tournament.
The Babar-led Pakistan side outplayed the arch-rivals in all departments to register a comprehensive 10-wicket victory.
Shaheen Afridi (3-31) starred with the ball as Pakistan restricted India to 151/7 in 20 overs and later chased down the total without breaking a sweat in 17.5 overs.
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"It won't get easier just because we beat India. We will take the confidence, but we're taking it one match at a time, and there's a long way to go in the tournament. We prepared well, and just kept the history out of our mind," Babar said in the post-match presentation ceremony.
"We needed quality practice, and warm-up matches, and even our domestic tournament and those games gave us a lot of confidence," he added.
While wicketkeeper batter Mohammad Rizwan stayed unbeaten on 79 off 55 balls (6 fours and 3 sixes) in the chase, captain Babar returned with 68 not out off 52 balls (6 fours and 2 sixes).
"This was the team's effort, and the early wickets were very helpful. It gave us a lot of confidence and our spinners were very good as well. We applied our plans and got the results," said Babar.
"We, the openers, kept it simple and built a partnership and because the wicket was getting better so we just wanted to keep batting till the end, which we did," he further stated.
With this victory, Pakistan also ended their losing streak in the World Cup events against the arch-rivals. Before this game, India had defeated Pakistan in 12 out of 12 games across the ODI and T20 World Cups.
(With ANI inputs)
