USA’s Pakistan-born pacer Ali Khan has revealed that the team management had planned for their T20 World Cup 2024 match against Pakistan and was confident of defeating the Babar Azam-led side.

Pakistan faced the USA for the first time in T20Is in Dallas, Texas, and in a nail-biting contest played out a tied match. However, in the super-over, the USA prevailed over the Men in Green and registered their first win over the 2009 T20 World Champions.

"The whole of Pakistan would've been angry with me had I bowled the Super Over. But, they didn't give me the ball. It was a very good call otherwise my entry in Pakistan would've been banned. The game against Pakistan was an emotional one as we had not played such a big team before. So they face Pakistan in a World Cup, especially with the kind of players they have like Babar Azam, Rizwan, Fakhar and Shaheen Afridi, was a big thing. We had played Canada in the opening match but we regularly against them," Ali said during a discussion on Caught Behind.

Ali Khan also said that the T20I series win over Bangladesh just before the T20 World Cup was a huge confidence booster for the USA team.

"But, the series against Bangladesh before the World Cup was a huge confidence booster. We beat them and it was the first time we won a series against a Test-playing nation. That gave us a lot of confidence going forward. We knew we could easily beat Canada and Ireland. Then it was about picking one team between India and Pakistan that we could beat. We had confidence that we could beat Pakistan. We had planned accordingly and were all over them from the first ball. I think they had a good phase when Babar and Shadab were batting, other than that we dominated Pakistan," he added.

Ali Khan also interestingly labeled Pakistan as an unpredictable side.

He said: "If you look at Pakistan's history, they will either destroy you or themselves. Thankfully, the latter happened. It was a lucky day for us and the win was important.”

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