Cricket story by Brian Watters, Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:04:00 GMT


LAHORE, Pakistan - The England team, which won the BBC Team of the Year award, was rudely awakened as it slipped to a seven-wicket loss in the second one-day international against Pakistan.

England won the toss and elected to bat on what looked like another batting beauty at Lahore.

However, they had not reckoned with the Rawalpindi Express. Shoaib Akhtar removed Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Strauss in the same over to trigger the wickets collapse. And Naved-ul-Hasan then repeated Shoaib's feat and got rid of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff in the same over.

Flintoff, who was bleary-eyed when he received the BBC Sports Personality Award of the Year, fell for a duck. England never really recovered from these blows and Shoaib was brought back by Inzamam.

He accounted for Geraint Jones and Ian Blackwell as England tottered at 131-8. Vikram Solanki came in as a super sub to replace James Anderson and in company of Liam Plunkett guided England to a respectable 230 all out. Plunkett played a dream knock and notched up his maiden half-century.

Pakistan started breezily and the target was never really going to test them. Wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal slammed a superb ton and was involved in an 86-run partnership with Kamran Akmal and then 74-run partnership with Mohammed Yusuf. Inzamam plundered Plunkett for four boundaries in an over and guided Pakistan to victory with six overs to spare.

After the match, Trescothick admitted that they were unable to put a decent score on board, "The wicket was pretty good but we just missed out today. We didn't perform as well as we did the other day and we didn't deserve to win," he said. "We didn't get enough runs, simple as that." His opposite number, Inzamam ul-Haq was full of praise for his bowlers, "They bowled in the right place and did not give any room to the batsmen."

Shoaib Akhtar was declared the man of the match for his spell of 5-54.

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