Saim Ayub scored 77 from 70 balls as Pakistan eased to a seven-wicket victory over South Africa (SA) in the third and final One-Day International in Faisalabad on Saturday to clinch the series 2-1.<\/p>\n
SA won the toss and elected to bat but a collapse from a commanding position saw them post a below-par 143 all out in 37.5 overs.<\/p>\n
That was never likely to challenge the home side and they reached their target with three wickets down and a huge 149 deliveries remaining.<\/p>\n
SA made a good start to their innings with a 72-run opening stand between left-handers Quinton de Kock (53) and Lhuan-dre Pretorius (39), but lost their next nine wickets for the addition of only 71 runs.<\/p>\n
Pakistan\u2019s spinners squeezed the scoring rate and got the ball to grip off the surface, with Abrar Ahmed picking up career-best figures of 4-27. Salman Agha (2-18) and Mohammad Nawaz (2-31) were also excellent as they ripped through the middle order.<\/p>\n
Abrar\u2019s first three wickets were all bowled as he bamboozled the South African batters with his variations.<\/p>\n
Pakistan lost opener Fakhar Zaman for a second successive duck in the opening over but Saim anchored their innings to go with contributions from Babar Azam (27) and Mohammad Rizwan (32 not out).<\/p>\n
Pakistan begin a three-match ODI series against Sri Lanka on Tuesday, while South Africa stay on the sub-continent with the start of their two-match test series against India on Friday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14846,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-14845","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Pakistan begin a three-match ODI series against Sri Lanka on Tuesday.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Pakistan begin a three-match ODI series against Sri Lanka on Tuesday.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19330,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14845\/revisions\/19330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=14845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}