Akmal brothers face a familiar task
on December 27th, 2009 at 9:21 pmThe second day completely belonged to Australia they dominated Pakistan team in all departments.
Pakistan’s bowlers failed to get early break throughs due to some below par bowling and defensive field placements, Mohammad Yousaf didn’t gave any close in fielders to Ajmal his field placements and Ajmal’s bowling was focused on the control of runs he kept on darting on the pads and bowling above 90k’s, it was painful to watch the ease with which Haurtiz was able to score his runs.
It was expected that Asif might provide an early break through with the second ball but he also failed, he never tried to bang the ball on the deck to extract seam movement he was only putting the ball just outside the off stump or on the off stump with no movement what so ever, the final whip of the wrist just before delivering the ball which enables him to get a bit of pace and slight movement off the pitch was missing through out the Aussie innings. Pakistan also missed the reverse swing ability of Umar Gul with the old ball his replacement Rauf was simply not good enough for test level cricket.
The team management again knowingly created a handicap in Pakistan’s bowling and batting, there was absolutely no justification in dropping Umar Gul and not considering Mohammad Sami for this match. Khurram Manzoor or Shoaib Malik would have been much better choice for the # 3 position, Faisal has demonstrated time and again that he can’t handle pace bowling.
This match is perhaps the last chance for Misbah Ul Haq to save his career. If he fails then there is no justification in playing with six specialist batsmen when the #6 batsman is consistently failing a genuine allrounder will be a better option.
The Australia bowlers bowled aggressively they either attacked the stumps or the rib cage and Watson did managed to reverse the bowl which raises the question why Asif was unable to move the old ball.
It’s highly unlikely that Misbah and Akmal brothers will be able to pull Pakistan out of the hole, but they do face a familiar task and often times they have managed to succeed a lot will depend on Umar Akmal’s performance.
Pakistan faces a Herculean task but the pitch is still quite easy to bat, Pakistan will have to bat from session to session they will have to kill as much time as they can to give themselves a chance in the second innings.
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