defeats by rivals India<\/a>, Pakistan slipped to 80-5 in pursuit of 134 before a partnership of 58 between Hussain Talat and Mohammad Nawaz rescued them.<\/p>\nNeeding 46 from 40 balls, Nawaz hit Wanindu Hasaranga, who had 2-5 after his first two overs, for back-to-back boundaries and when the leg-spinner returned to bowl the 17th over Talat struck another two fours.<\/p>\n
That swung the equation from 26 runs needed from 24 balls, to 14 from 18, and left-hander Nawaz added three more sixes to seal victory with two overs to spare.<\/p>\n
Nawaz finished 38 not out, with Talat unbeaten on 32.<\/p>\n
While Pakistan would not have been eliminated with defeat, they would have needed a series of other results to go their way – the situation now facing Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
They had earlier done well to restrict Sri Lanka to 133-8, with left-armer Shaheen Afridi taking 3-28.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka took 53 runs from the powerplay but lost three wickets in doing so and were 58-5 when Charith Asalanka and Dasun Shanaka fell in consecutive deliveries in the eighth over.<\/p>\n
Kamindu Mendis led a recovery with 50 but he was pinned in front in the penultimate over by Shaheen – who had earlier dismissed Kusal Mendis with the second ball of the match – denying Sri Lanka a big finish.<\/p>\n
India and Bangladesh, who both won their opening Super Four games, meet in Dubai on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The top two teams in the Super Four will contest Sunday’s final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pakistan boosted their hopes of reaching the Asia Cup final by edging to a five-wicket victory against Sri…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-156257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}