Captain Babar Azam guided Pakistan through a nervy chase as they ended their T20 World Cup campaign with a three-wicket win over Ireland on Sunday in the last Group A match, a dead rubber after both teams were already eliminated. Pakistan finished third in the five-team group with four points after losing to India and the United States, who progressed to the Super Eight stage. Ireland finished bottom with one point, ending their campaign without a win. Pakistan, the 2009 champions and runners-up in 2007 and 2022, lost their first two Group A fixtures. A stunning super-over humiliation at the hands of the United States was followed by a six-run loss to bitter rivals India in a game where they failed to chase down a modest 120-run target. After Pakistan won the toss and chose to bowl, Shaheen Afridi (3-22) dismissed Andrew Balbirnie and Lorcan Tucker in the first over while skipper Paul Stirling and George Dockrell fell to Mohammad Amir (2-11), leaving Ireland reeling at 28-5 in the sixth over. Gareth Delany (31 off 19 balls) helped stabilise Ireland\u2019s innings but fell to Imad Wasim (3-8) before an unbeaten last-wicket partnership of 26 runs between Joshua Little (22 not out) and Benjamin White (5 not out) got them to 106-9. After Pakistan openers Mohammed Rizwan and Saim Ayub (both 17) fell during the powerplay, Barry McCarthy (3-15) dismissed Usman Khan and Shadab Khan in the same over, leaving Pakistan looking shaky at 57-5. But Azam (32 not out) anchored the innings and Pakistan chased down the target with seven balls to spare, as Lauderhill\u2019s Central Broward Park stadium finally saw a match completed after three of its previous games were washed out. Pakistan: Mohammad Rizwan, Saim Ayub, Babar Azam, Fakhar Zaman, Usman Khan, Shadab Khan, Imad Wasim, Shaheen Afridi, Abbas Afridi, Haris Rauf and Mohammad Amir Ireland: Andy Balbirnie, Paul Stirling, Lorcan Tucker, Harry Tector, Curtis Campher, George Dockrell, Gareth Delany, Mark Adair, Barry McCarthy, Josh Little and Ben White<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Captain Babar Azam guided Pakistan through a nervy chase as they ended their T20 World Cup campaign with a three-wicket win over Ireland on Sunday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18125,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}