Moments of madness: 5 shots that the batsmen wished they never played

Misbah -ul-Haq’s scoop to short fine leg – India vs Pakistan, T20 World Cup finals, 2007

The miserable Misbah moment

Another captain who messed it up for his side, big time. After a late blast from Rohit Sharma, India propelled to a fighting score of 157. Pakistan however, collapsed while chasing. At 77/5, no one gave them a chance to come even close but the captain had other ideas.

Misbah-ul-Haq, along with Yasir Arafat got into damage control mode and took the score to 104. After Arafat departed, suddenly the game turned, and Misbah smoked Harbhajan Singh for three huge sixes to keep abreast with the scoring rate.

Along with the captain, Sohail Tanvir did his bit to lift the Pakistan total to 138 in the 18th over. As Ravi Shastri would say, the game looked like going right down to the wire and going into the final over, Pakistan needed just 13 runs to pull off a sensational victory.

Then came the master-stroke. A long-maned Indian captain threw the ball to Joginder Sharma. The move seemed to have backfired as Misbah whacked a full toss for six to long-off.

But Misbah definitely didn’t read much cricket history and didn’t know much about Mike Gatting. He committed the same mistake – the ball pitched on off and middle, Misbah went down on his knees and attempted a scoop over short fine leg. However, he didn’t middle it, and it traveled only as far as Sreesanth at short-fine leg.

The Indian team went into frenzy and Misbah crouched on his knees in complete disbelief as he threw away the inaugural cricket T20 World Cup.