England Vs Pakistan Final

A team that nearly went home

Pakistan arrived at the 1992 World Cup final having spent most of the tournament looking like they would not reach it. They lost to the West Indies and to South Africa, and were bowled out for 74 against England in Adelaide before rain washed the match out and handed them a point they badly needed. It was only in the last round of group games, against New Zealand, that results elsewhere put them through to the semi-final. Imran Khan, captaining in what he had already said would be his last tournament, told his players to bat and bowl like cornered tigers, a phrase that followed the team for the rest of the campaign and long after it.

England, by contrast, had been the tournament's most consistent side, winning seven of their eight completed group games under Graham Gooch. The two teams had already met once in this World Cup, in that rained-off match in Adelaide, and met again on 25 March 1992 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground with the trophy at stake. Imran won the toss and chose to bat.

Imran and Miandad rebuild

The start was shaky. Derek Pringle removed Aamer Sohail and Ramiz Raja cheaply, and Pakistan were 24 for 2 after eight overs. Imran Khan then joined Javed Miandad, and the two most experienced players in the side batted through the middle overs at a pace that looked slow at the time and was heavily criticised in Pakistan afterwards. They put on 139 for the third wicket, Imran making 72 from 110 balls and Miandad 58 from 98, before Miandad was caught with the score on 163 in the 40th over. Imran fell four overs later for 72, caught off Ian Botham, having rebuilt the innings from its early trouble.

Inzamam and Akram cut loose

What the slow middle overs had set up was a final assault. Inzamam-ul-Haq, twenty-two years old and playing in his first World Cup, came in and made 42 from 35 balls, and Wasim Akram joined him to add 52 in under seven overs. Akram made 33 from 18 balls before he was run out by a direct hit with the score on 249, the last wicket of the innings; Saleem Malik was left unbeaten at the other end. Pakistan finished on 249 for 6 from their fifty overs. Derek Pringle was the pick of England's bowlers with 3 for 22 from his ten overs.

Gooch and Fairbrother chase

England's reply began badly. Ian Botham, who had troubled Pakistan's top order all tournament, was caught off Wasim Akram for a duck in the third over, and Alec Stewart followed soon after, leaving England 21 for 2. Graham Gooch and Graeme Hick steadied things with a stand of 38 before both fell within a few overs of each other, Hick lbw to Mushtaq Ahmed's leg spin and Gooch caught for 29. At 69 for 4, England needed a recovery, and got one from Allan Lamb and Neil Fairbrother, who added 72 for the fifth wicket. Fairbrother made 62 from 70 balls, the top score of the innings, before he was caught off Aaqib Javed in the 43rd over. Lamb, whose dismissal for 31 triggered the collapse that followed, was bowled earlier in the same passage of play by Wasim Akram.

Pakistan's three frontline spin and seam options shared the workload evenly through that chase. Aaqib Javed bowled his full ten overs for only 27 runs, keeping one end quiet while Wasim Akram probed from the other, and Aamer Sohail's occasional left-arm spin went for 49 without taking a wicket but never let England free their arms. Imran Khan brought himself on for over spells either side of the middle overs, sending down 6.2 overs of his gentle medium pace for the wicket of Richard Illingworth, England's last man out, a captain's intervention that closed the innings.

Two balls from Akram

The match turned in the 35th over. England were 141 for 4, Lamb well set alongside Fairbrother, when Wasim Akram bowled him with the fifth ball of the over, the delivery pitching outside off stump and nipping back to take out the top of off. Chris Lewis, in to face the very next ball, got an even better one: it did the same thing, and he too was bowled without scoring. In the space of two deliveries England went from 141 for 4 to 141 for 6, from needing steady progress to needing around 110 from the last fifteen overs with only five wickets standing. It remains one of the most replayed passages of bowling in any World Cup final. Fairbrother and Dermot Reeve added 39 for the seventh wicket before Fairbrother fell to Aaqib Javed, and Reeve followed soon after, caught off Mushtaq Ahmed.

Derek Pringle made an unbeaten 18 and Richard Illingworth 14, but England could not close the gap. Aaqib Javed and Mushtaq Ahmed took two and three wickets respectively, and England were all out for 227 in the penultimate over, Pakistan winning by 22 runs. Wasim Akram, with 3 for 49, the two wickets in one over that broke England's middle order, and 33 runs with the bat, was named man of the match.

The cornered tigers line

Imran Khan lifted the trophy in only his final tournament as captain, a fitting way to close a career that had begun in 1971. His side had gone from being nearly eliminated in the group stage to champions, and the phrase he used to rally them, that a cornered tiger is at its most dangerous, has stayed attached to that Pakistan team ever since. The final was also notable for the players it introduced to a wider audience: Inzamam-ul-Haq's innings in the final, coming after a match-winning 60 in the semi-final against New Zealand, marked the start of a career that would make him one of the leading batters of his generation.

What it meant

It remains Pakistan's only World Cup title. England, beaten finalists for the third time in five tournaments, would not reach another World Cup final until 2019. The full scorecard for Melbourne, including every partnership and the order of England's ten wickets, is on this page, and the sides that met that day can be explored on the Pakistan and England team pages. In The Chase you can take either squad into a match of your own and see whether you can finish the tigers off, or complete the chase for England.

Sources

• CricArcade World Cup archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
• ESPNcricinfo: 1991/92 World Cup final scorecard and report
• Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1993: the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand