Pakistan won their fifth competition in Sharjah in four seasons, to claim the new Wills Trophy and $US30,000. Though favourites, they had lost their first two matches, and their position seemed hopeless until West Indies failed to score two runs from the last three balls of the third. It was the fast bowlers who kept their hopes alive. Waqar Younis and Aqib Javed collected 11 wickets each, but Aqib was the pick of the attack. His sustained accuracy and late out-swing bewildered batsmen, and his seven for 37 bettered W. W. Davis's seven for 51 against Australia in the 1983 World Cup. It included an extraordinary hat-trick of three lbws, which the Indians found too extraordinary. They left furious at both the umpiring and what they claimed was bias against them by Moslem organisers. The Indians had started with three wins while the West Indians managed only one win, in their first match, and would have been humiliated without two fine centuries from their new captain, Richie Richardson.
The beneficiaries of the tournament were Wasim Raja and Mahmood Hussain of Pakistan, C. K. Nayudu and E. A. S. Prasanna of India and West Indies' C. G. Greenidge.
Note: Matches in this section were not first-class.