Afridi's fireworks outshine Broad and England hopes go up in smoke

It is not easy to put a finger on why but Twenty20 does not quite appear to be Inzamam-ul-Haq's cup of Darjeeling. When Pakistan bowled, he perched at slip and then stood imperiously at cover while the mayhem that is this format unfolded around him.

When it came to his turn at the crease, four wickets down, for the most part of his stay, he pottered about like a man tending his begonias while the more robust members of his side made sure that England's modest total of 144 for seven was never remotely out of reach.

He all but ran himself out a couple of times of course (it goes without saying) and his partners were kept on their toes in this regard. Just once, when Darren Gough returned for a second spell, and saw his first delivery lofted over the long on boundary, did he bother to stretch himself.

When Abdul Razzaq finished the match in a blaze of boundaries, with 13 balls of the innings and five wickets still in hand, Inzamam had reached 11 without breaking into either run or sweat: the five singled that accompanied his six having been strolled as nonchalantly as befits a bank holiday. Duncan Fletcher would hesitate to have him in his side: too one dimensional although it is hard to visualise him as anything other than three very large ones.

England were handsomely beaten by a side that behaved immaculately (they would have been wary of scratching their backsides with the eyes of the cricket world on them) and which collectively anyway was exploring uncharted territory in this shortest form of the game. Only a typically belligerent 53 from Marcus Trescothick, from just 36 balls with nine fours, and latterly 27 from Jamie Dalrymple and 24 cudgelled inelegantly but effectively by Michael Yardy on his England debut, lent the innings a level of respectability after it had been holed below the waterline before it reached the halfway point. It began promisingly enough, with Trescothick and Ian Bell, the latest experiment to find an opening combination, adding 39 inside five overs as Shoaib Akhtar, seriously rapid with the keeper a good 25 yards back, and Mohammad Asif gave notice (later reinforced by the skill of Rana Naveed) of how Pakistan had missed them in the Test series.

Shoaib began the decline from that position to 50 for four, Younis Khan collecting a sharp rolling catch at slip to dismiss Bell, the third umpire called into play to ensure that he had held the rebound cleanly as it bobbled from his grasp.

In the next over, the sixth, Asif removed Kevin Pietersen's middle stump as, almost from habit, he tried to work his first ball to leg and then two balls later saw Kamran Akmal take a good diving catch to remove Andrew Strauss. When Paul Collingwood offered an insipid bat to Naveed to give the keeper a second catch, the game was already being tugged from England's grasp.

Pakistan's simple tactic was to get ahead of the rate and stay there, with Shoaib Malik and Mohammad Hafeez, who was to top score with 46, adding 23 inside four overs before Stuart Broad, a young pace bowler whose smooth method invokes visions of the Australian Rodney Hogg without yet the velocity, announced himself on the international stage with the wickets of Malik, incontrovertibly lbw to a full length delivery and then Khan, surprised by the pace of a first ball bouncer which he could only follow round and touch to Chris Read behind the stumps.

It was Shahid Afridi who then effectively sealed the match for his side with one of those pyrotechnic cameos that leaves spectators open mouthed at his hand-eye coordination and nerve.

Broad's hat-trick ball was summarily thumped back over his head almost for six, and in the space of nine further deliveries, that is all, Afridi, who earlier had bowled his four overs for just 28, more than respectable in this form of the game, hit four more boundaries, three of them in Sajid Mahmood's first over that conceded 22, and a six that went not so much out of the ground as into the stratosphere. They never got the ball back.

• Cricket
• England v Pakistan cricket 2006
• England cricket team
• Pakistan cricket team
• Stuart Broad

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