Pakistan 148 for 0 (Ayub 113*, Shafique 32*) beat Zimbabwe 145 (Myers 33, Williams 31, Abrar 4-33, Salman 3-26) by ten wickets
By now, Ayub had begun to purr. Trevor Gwandu, the first change, was greeted with two cracking shots on the off side, followed up with a four and a six in his second over. That six brought up a 32-ball half-century for Ayub, and he was still only in third gear.
There was little the spinners could do in the absence of scoreboard pressure. Legspinner Brandon Mavuta was dispatched for three successive boundaries at the start of the 14th over, and leaked 47 in the four overs he bowled.
Tadiwanashe Marumani and Joylord Gumbie were involved in the second run-out in as many matches to break the opening stand. Abrar Ahmed, opening the bowling alongside Aamer Jamal, got sharp turn to get rid of Gumbie for his first ODI wicket before Myers and Craig Ervine began to rebuild.
Another rebuild, this time from Williams and Raza, was thwarted after Salman had Raza hole out into the off side to reduce Zimbabwe to 97 for 5. The lower-order collapse came when an attempted Williams reverse sweep off Ayub saw him trapped in front, and the remainder went down in a heap.
Zimbabwe lost the last five wickets for 24 runs as Abrar returned to snare his fourth, while Faisal Akram cleaned up Muzarabani to finish the innings off. It looked well under par then, and by the time Ayub was done, that couldn’t have been clearer.
