A left-arm masterclass in a losing cause
On a night Pakistan won by 93 runs, the sharpest spell came from an Omani veteran. Aamir Kaleem ripped through Pakistan’s top order with 3 for 31, prising out Saim Ayub first ball, pinning Salman Ali Agha for a duck, and then cutting down Mohammad Haris just as he looked set to take the game away. It was the kind of spell that flips a scoreboard, and for a stretch, it did.
Pakistan had settled nicely after an early wobble. Haris, busy and clean through the line, stitched an 89-run stand with Sahibzada Farhan and seemed in full control at 66 off 43, peppering the boundary with seven fours and three sixes. Then Kaleem changed the mood. Working with a grippy surface, he dragged his length just short, teased with flight, and kept tight lines at middle and off. The result was pressure: dot balls, miscues, and suddenly a silent stadium from Pakistan’s point of view.
The slide was visible on the card. From 89 for two after 11 overs, Pakistan were squeezed to 120 for five. Kaleem’s first strike — a golden duck for Ayub — gave Oman early belief. Dismissing Salman Ali Agha the same way deepened it. The key blow, though, was Haris. He had been the anchor and the accelerator, and once he miscued to end a well-paced fifty, Pakistan had to rebuild all over again.
Oman’s spinners, sensing the surface, bowled in pairs and stuck to a simple plan: take pace off, attack the stumps, and make the batters target the longer boundary. Fielders backed them up with clean work at the circle. For once, a heavyweight batting unit was second-guessing its options. That’s the impact of disciplined spin in the middle overs — you don’t always see it in the highlights, but you feel it on the run rate.
Even so, Pakistan did enough late to post a total that traveled beyond par for this pitch. They found a few boundaries at the death and ran hard between the wickets, nudging the total to something Oman would have to bat well to chase. Kaleem’s figures told a story of control — 3/31 in a high-pressure tournament game — but without a big chase from his batters, it set the stage rather than the final act.
Spin swings momentum; pace seals the result
The chase fizzled quickly. Pakistan’s attack, fresher and quicker, hit a hard length and kept the stumps in play. Oman’s top order never settled, and the dismissals piled up. Nine batters couldn’t reach double digits, which says plenty about the discipline Pakistan brought with the ball and in the field. Singles were pinched, but the boundaries dried up. That’s how the asking rate turns from steep to impossible.
The irony wasn’t lost on anyone: Kaleem, Oman's best bowler on the night, was out for 13 to part-time off-spin from Saim Ayub. It underlined two things. One, Pakistan had enough tools to close the game even beyond their frontline attack. Two, the pitch had variable grip that kept any non-pace option in the game if you hit the right areas.
If you zoom out, the match doubled as a snapshot of the gap between a full-member powerhouse and an ambitious associate. Oman can make games sticky with spin and fielding intensity, like they did here. But to turn that into wins against top sides, they need one of two things: a batting surge upfront or a calm finisher at the back end. Neither materialized.
For Pakistan, the takeaway is both positive and cautionary. Positive, because they closed out a game by a wide margin and shared the wickets around. Cautionary, because a disciplined spin unit slowed them dramatically in the middle overs. Teams will notice that. Expect more left-arm orthodox and wrist-spin combinations thrown at their top order as the tournament builds.
Kaleem’s spell will linger because it was old-school craft — changes of pace, teasing angles, natural variation off the pitch. There was no mystery ball. Just patience, control, and the nerve to keep attacking even when Haris was striking cleanly. That’s why dismissing a set batter mattered more than the two ducks: it knocked out Pakistan’s rhythm and opened a window for Oman that the batting, sadly, couldn’t climb through.
Oman can still bank the positives. They showed they can strangle a heavyweight in the middle overs, and they have a spinner who can boss a game on helpful pitches. They’ve done this on big stages before in T20 cricket, and this performance adds another brick to that case. If the batting catches up, nights like this won’t just be remembered for a brilliant spell in defeat.
