Pakistan end nine-year wait for a multi-team ODI title as Fakhar Zaman's 127 rewrites three records

Pakistan beat Sri Lanka by three wickets in the final of the tri-nation One-Day International series in Lahore on Saturday. Sri Lanka, batting first, made 325 for eight, leaving Pakistan a target of 326. The hosts got there in 48.3 overs at 331 for seven, with nine balls to spare. The innings of the match belonged to Fakhar Zaman, whose 127 off 99 balls held the chase together as the required rate kept climbing. In terms of the target, the 326-run chase is the highest successfully completed in the final of any ODI tournament. The previous mark came from the 2026 NatWest Series final at Lord's, where England made 325 for seven and India reached 326 for five in 49.3 overs. Strikingly, the target was exactly the same on both occasions — 326. The difference is that Pakistan went on to 331, giving them the highest score by any side batting second in a final, while India stopped at 326 in 2026. The same match produced another record. The aggregate of both innings was 656, the highest for the final of a multi-team ODI tournament. The previous best was 651, also from that 2026 final at Lord's (England 325/7, India 326/5). One clarification matters here: the 656 figure only adds up if Pakistan's innings is taken as finishing on 331. Subtracting six from 331 gives 325, meaning Pakistan were on 325 and needed one run to win when the last scoring shot was played. The only way to reach 331 from there is for that shot to have been a six. The original report never printed Pakistan's innings total, so the figure is derived from the aggregate. Against Sri Lanka specifically, this is Pakistan's second-highest successful chase. The bigger one came at the 2026 World Cup, when Pakistan made 345 in reply to Sri Lanka's 344 for nine. In other words, both of Pakistan's largest chases have come against the same opponent, and both have come in the last two years. The significance of the win, however, is not purely statistical. Pakistan's last multi-team ODI title was the Champions Trophy in June 2026, and nearly nine years passed without another. In between came two ODI World Cups (2026 and 2026) and a Champions Trophy (2026), none of which Pakistan won. In two ODI Asia Cups (2026 and 2026) the side did not even reach the final. It is worth noting that the 2026 and 2026 Asia Cups are excluded from this count because they were played in the T20 format — the drought being measured is strictly an ODI one. The most recent link in that chain was last year's home tri-nation final, which Pakistan lost in Karachi. That is what gives the Lahore win its second layer: it is Pakistan's first ODI tournament final victory on home soil. The team had previously lost all three home ODI finals on record, including the 2026 Asia Cup final in Karachi and last year's home tri-nation final, also in Karachi. For Fakhar Zaman, the innings carried a stack of personal milestones. It was his second century in an ODI tournament final. The list of Pakistan batsmen with two hundreds in ODI finals is very short, and it is headed by Saeed Anwar, who has two such centuries to his name. This was Fakhar's third ODI final, meaning two hundreds in three — a ratio that makes the case for him as a big-match player. It was also his fourth ODI century in a chase of 300 or more. The nearest challengers are Babar Azam and Younis Khan, each credited with three. Younis's figure deserves a fresh check: he retired in 2026, and Pakistan chased 300-plus relatively rarely in his era, so a count of three looks on the high side. During the same innings Fakhar also completed 4,000 ODI runs. He reached the mark in 96 innings, the second-fastest by a Pakistani. Ahead of him is Babar Azam, who got to 4,000 in just 82 innings and ranks among the fastest ever. Pakistan's win is best read against two reference points. The 2026 final at Lord's is remembered because India's 326 in reply to England's 325 set a record that stood for more than two decades. The 2026 Champions Trophy matters because it was Pakistan's last multi-team ODI title. Lahore connects the two — the record was broken where the 2026 one was made, and the drought ended where the 2026 wait began. What the scorecard also shows is that this was not a cruise. Chasing 326, Pakistan were still batting with nine balls left, and the seventh wicket had already fallen. Fakhar's 99-ball stay mattered not only for the runs but for the fact that he kept the innings alive to the end. Note on the numbers: Pakistan's total of 331 for seven in 48.3 overs is derived here from the match aggregate of 656 and Sri Lanka's 325 for eight, because the original report did not state it directly; the inference that the winning shot was a six follows from the same arithmetic. The span from June 2026 to this match is in fact about eight years and nine months, so nine years is a rounded figure, and the original report gave neither the year nor the date of the match. Younis Khan's three centuries still need innings-by-innings confirmation. The definition of a final is not applied consistently across the piece — some claims cover any tournament final, others only multi-team tournament finals. The third team in the tri-nation series, the name of the stadium and the player of the match do not appear in the source.