For Pakistan’s long-suffering supporters, the similarities have been too tempting to ignore. By slipping into the knockout stage of the T20 World Cup through the back door, having been all but eliminated after two early defeats, it reminded those long enough in the tooth of 1992, and the World Cup victory of Imran Khan’s cornered tigers. If the omens were good, then the dream lives on after New Zealand were swept aside in the first semi-final in Sydney.
Carried along on a wave of renewed belief and emotion, fuelled by a raucous full house at an SCG that was as green in colour as a crowd would be in Karachi or Lahore, Pakistan looked a side transformed. Twelve months ago in the United Arab Emirates,
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