Can disarrayed Pakistan stop Australian juggernaut?

The rains in New South Wales and across the east coast of Australia this week brought so much relief to farmers in the drought-stricken region that there were videos of people dancing and celebrating in the streets. One set of foreigners who might gladly have partaken in such merriment was the visiting Pakistan cricket team in Sydney, staring defeat in the face when the heavens opened, forcing the abandonment of a game that Australia looked to be easing through.

While that means Aaron Finch‘s men don’t go to Canberra with a 1-0 lead, they do enter the contest with significant momentum. Australia are on something of a T20I tear at the moment, having won their last five completed games. They swatted Sri Lanka aside 3-0 just last week, the team that less than a month ago

Meanwhile, Pakistan suddenly find themselves in disarray in their most-favoured format of the last three years. In the first game, they scraped their way to a somewhat respectable total, down almost solely to new captain Babar Azam‘s exquisite half-century. There is the caveat of the rain bringing a somewhat abrupt conclusion to the innings, but it’s hard to argue Pakistan were pacing themselves effectively either; regular loss of wickets combined with watertight discipline from Australia’s bowlers meant any total they put up in the allotted 20 would have ended up being somewhat below par.

The visitors must be careful not to let the second game also become a one-man batting effort. The sample size for the bowling isn’t enough to jump to drastic conclusions, but on the evidence of the two overs Mohammad Irfan bowled, there’s little to explain why the 37-year-old was brought out from the cold to join Pakistan on what has historically been their most challenging tour. On the whole, the visitors looked alarmingly off the pace in the first game, and this is their opportunity to demonstrate that it was something of an aberration.

did the same to Pakistan in Lahore. David Warner finds himself in irresistible form again, as does Finch, who looked imperious in the short time Australia got to bat before the weather intervened. The bowlers, too, Adam Zampa excepted, had solid outings carrying on from the Sri Lanka series.