Opener D’Arcy Short composed an unbeaten half century to take Australia to a comfortable victory against UAE in the one-off T20I on Monday (Oct 22). Australia’s Ben McDermott who had a great One-Day cup back home made his debut in this T20I and hit the winning runs. The home team UAE has put on a spirited display in what was their maiden T20I against Australia but the no.3 T20I team got the result in their favour at the end.
UAE were off to an awful start losing their first two wickets even before scoring their first run – opener Ashfaq Ahmed and captain Rohan Mustafa bagged ducks each. Shaiman Anwar and Rameez Shahzad then steadied the ship with a 53-run partnership for the fourth wicket.
Anwar’s 41 and Mohammad Naveed’s unbeaten cameo helped UAE finish with 117 for 6 in their 20 overs. Chasing a par score, Australia lost their captain Aaron Finch in the second over who scored just a run. Though Australia went on to lost two more wickets, opener D’Arcy Short kept one end tight to take them to 7-wicket victory with 23 balls to spare.
With this one-off T20I, Glenn Maxwell became the third player from Australia to feature in 50 T20Is or more. David Warner (70 T20Is) and Shane Watson (50 T20Is) are the other Australians to get to this milestone before Maxwell. This one-off game was awarded T20I status, however, it was actually scheduled as a warm up for Australia before the 3-match series against Pakistan. The three T20Is between Pakistan and Australia will be played at Abu Dhabi (Oct 24) and Dubai (Oct 26 and Oct 28).
Brief Scores:
Australia – 119/3 in 16.1 overs (D’Arcy Short – 68*, Amir Hayat – 2/26, Imran Haider – 1/16) beat United Arab Emirates – 117/6 in 20 overs (Shaiman Anwar – 41, Nathan Coulter-Nile – 2/20, Billy Stanlake – 2/20) by a margin of 7 wickets
