At the Eden Gardens, Pakistan became the last team to be ruled out of semi-final contention at the 2023 World Cup, with New Zealand’s place in the top four confirmed.
When the penultimate league match began in Kolkata, Pakistan had only a mathematical chance of reaching the semi-finals of the 2023 World Cup ahead of New Zealand.
If they had played England first, they would have had to win by 287 points. He is one of only two teams to win the World Cup by a large margin. In his ODIs for all men, that number is five.
Still, that is nothing compared tothe absurd target that would have been necessary if Pakistan had bowled first. That explains Babar Azam’s half-resigned smile when Jos Buttler won the toss and was elected to bat.
Of course, it was mathematically possible. Pakistan would have qualified if they had beaten England clean sheet and won on the first ball. In fact, they could have won the match by forcing England to score 168 off 29 balls and hit 29 sixes. If they had allowed more than his 168 goals, or even if he had scored one or more of his sixes on each of the 29 balls, it wouldn’t have been enough.
In all, England scored 337-9. Pakistan had to reach 343 in 7.2 overs at 46.77 per over. Although from a practical point of view the goal was unachievable, it was still achievable, even with a tremendous number of mistakes and mistakes.
However, nothing of the sort happened and when Chris Woakes bowled the third ball of the 8th over, Pakistan were officially eliminated with 34 wins and 2 losses. The number of extra balls, including free hits, cannot exceed New Zealand’s net run rate of +0.743.
World Cup 2023 semi-final line-ups
Semi-finals 1 – November 15:India – New Zealand (Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai)
Semi-finals 2 – November 16:Australia – South Africa (Eden Gardens, Calcutta)
The final will be played on November 19 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
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