Wickets tumble, Pakistanis crumble: Twitterati react to Pakistan’s first innings against New Zealand

As Pakistan’s wickets tumbled in the first 10 overs of the first Twenty20 International against New Zealand in Auckland on Friday, cricket fans were having a meltdown on Twitter.

With depleted squads, New Zealand and Pakistan clashed in the series opener at Eden Park, with the hosts without regular captain Kane Williamson, who is on paternity leave and strike bowler Trent Boult.

Pakistan were also without their regular captain and world’s second-ranked T20 batsman Babar Azam who was ruled out of the T20 series with a thumb injury suffered during practice in Queenstown last Sunday.

Wickets fell so quickly for Pakistan in the first innings that Pakistanis had a hard time wrapping their heads around 5 down for less than 50 runs!

Eventually, Pakistan set New Zealand a 154-run target — but not before Pakistanis had their say.

Some had cheeky observations

Are we masochists?

Yikes!

The lost were holding on to hope

While Haris Rauf had a fan base of his own

Babar was missed a lot

And some serious questions were asked

Fans just wanted Amir to take his retirement back

While Shoaib Akhtar was on a different tangent