The quarter-finals of 2015 ODI World Cup saw hosts Australia at log﷽gerheads with the unpredictable Pakistan side𝔍.
Batting first, Pakistan were in all sorts of trouble, finding it difficult to cope up with the pace of Josh Hazlewood and Mitchel🏅l Starc on a juicy Adelaide pitch.
So much so that🐻 pinch-hitter Wahab Riaz had to walk in to bite the bullet against firm-favourites and the eventu🌼al winners of the tournament.
During 🐟his volatile stay at the crease, Riaz was finding it challenging to meet the ball with his willow. To which, the Australian close-in fielders with thei✱r sledges swarmed in to build a pressure-cookers situation for the Pakistani pacer.
One of the comments made from Shane Watson at slips fired up Riaz. ‘Are you holding a bat?’ asked Watson obeying the renowned Aussie culture of sledging.
However, the left-arm fast bowler got his revenge🍬 by bowling one of the great spells in World Cup cricket. Watson received a dose of his own medicine when Riaz sledged him back during his long follow-throughs.
Riaz gave the Aussie all-rounder a mouthful as he found it a hard task 🔯to survive an unplayable spell. Had Rahat Ali not dropped the catch, Watson would have been back to the pavilion.
“When he came into bat, I settled the score with him. When I was batting Watson just came up to me and said ‘are you holding a bat?’ and that was going through my mind,” Riaz was quoted as saying by Indian Today.
“I let him know that even he had a bat, but he couldn’t touch the ball,” added Riaz. Watto then steered Australia to a comfortable win as the hosts progressed to the semi-finals.
