Pak Vs England

Tom Banton's maiden T20I half-century was the highlight of another soggy evening at Emirates Old Trafford, but the weather had the defining word as the opening match of the series against Pakistan was abandoned due to rain.

Banton, seizing his chance to impress as opening batsman in the absence of Jos Buttler and Jason Roy, made an increasingly fluent 71. But rain, surely the most consistent performer of what is laughingly passing for summer in England, intervened about 80 minutes into the match and, while it relented around 40 minutes before the final restart time, the umpires concluded conditions were unfit for a resumption.

Pakistan will surely feel the more aggrieved of the sides. After weathering Banton's storm, they had reduced England to 131 for 6 in the 17th over and would have been the more confident of the teams having made decent use of winning an important toss.

It would have been even better, however, had Iftikhar Ahmed been able to cling on to a relatively simple chance offered by Banton on 5. The batsman had fiddled at one angled across him from Shaheen Shah Afridi but Iftikhar, at slip, put down the chance.

It looked, for a while, as if it would be a costly miss. For if Banton took a little while to adjust to a surface which had been under cover for much of the day due to rain - his first 20 runs occupied 19 deliveries - he soon found his stride. At one point, the 21-year-old thrashed 38 from 13 balls, demonstrating a powerful slog-sweep off the spinners and an audacious ability to scoop the seamers.