Pakistan’s cricket team is undergoing a horrifying tour of Australia where their inexperienced bowling attack and misfiring batting-unit has come under the scanner against a competent cricket team.
One of the few heartening things to have come out for Pakistan from this tour was the making of the Test batsman Babar Azam. In the first Test, Babar Azam scored a century in Brisbane when everyone else was falling around him like ninepins. During the first innings of the pink-ball test, it was only Babar Azam’s solid defense and pristine strokes that put up any sort of resistance to Australian bowlers.
On the third day, Babar Azam continued in the same vein and if not for those 3 runs, the right-handed batsman would have registered his second century on Australia, something which former coach Mickey Arthur had predicted at the end of Day 2.
Arthur’s prediction on Azam
Babar Azam, who added 105 runs with Yasir Shah, nicked a ball off Mitchell Starc on 97.
Mickey Arthur said, “Babar Azam is a class act; He could go on tomorrow provided we get ‘Ricky Ponting’ Yasir Shah to stay with him for a little bit, and if Mohammad Abbas can hang around, Babar can get a hundred. You watch Babar and how he is transferring his weight or you look at the positions he is making, it’s positive, it’s decisive and it’s solid, and they don’t look like breaching his defense either.”
Mickey Arthur also hoped for Pakistan batsmen to put up some fight on the third day, and courtesy Babar Azam scored 97 runs and Yasir Shah scored 74 runs, the visitors did exactly that, lending some sort of respectability to the first innings total.
“Everybody loses in Test cricket – you win some and you lose some – but the key is how you lose. I just hope Pakistan tomorrow, come out fighting, I hope they come out tomorrow and show a passion, they show a desire and hunger to try salvage some pride out of this tour because if they don’t, I feel that this Test match could be finished tomorrow,” the former coach said.
