Australia and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755, Headingley Test
On the second day of test match, things quickly moved in favour of Australia as they became the book maker’s favourite to win the second test. Pakistan faces déjà vu of the Sydney test after Watson dismissed the Pakistani team for 258.
Pakistan were in a strong position when they bowled Australia out for 88 in the first innings but Ponting along with his team mates made a strong come back. They restricted Pakistan’s lead to 170 runs. Ponting led from the front in the second innings and looked convincing on 61.
Shane Watson was the bowling hero for Australia following another failure from the frontline pacers. Watson picked up his career best 6 for 33 against Pakistan. Watson’s batting however has failed on this tour. Watson believes Australia is in a strong position because of their fighting spirit. "We have seen it before and it might bring back some memories to Pakistan of the Test match in Sydney a few months ago", http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Clarke-c51120] batting very nicely at the moment. We know there is still a lot of hard work to go in this Test and hopefully we will continue to do that over the next couple of days and get the result like we did in Sydney".
The Pakistani coach believes the game remains open and his team will not make the mistakes they made in Sydney. Waqar Younis took over the coaching responsibility following Pakistan’s horrific tour to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746. "We had such a Test match back in Sydney recently so we don't really want to get into that sort of situation", Waqar said. "We don't want to lose this Test match. We're still 34 runs ahead of them, they have to start getting runs on top of us, so it's still very much an open game for us. Tomorrow, first session is a very important one. If we fetch a couple of wickets it'll do us good".
Waqar is fully aware of Ponting’s prized wicket. Ponting looked in good touch against seam bowling. "If you look at the last Test he struggled against the swing bowling but [today] he managed to get out of that period where we were looking to get him out," Waqar said. "He's got 12,000 runs, you've got to give him credit. He's a class act, and he's looking good, definitely a danger-man for us. If we can fetch him early morning it will be a different story".
It’s been almost 103 years since any team won after scoring 88 or less runs in the first innings of a test match but bookies are fancying an Australian win this time around. Pakistan’s bowling department has been consistently performing while the batting department has maintained equal consistency in failure. Pakistan’s batting line up is inexperienced and finds it difficult to come out of T20 mode.
The Akmal brothers were a bit too natural for test cricket. Instead of taking responsibility and playing cautiously, they looked to attack with a high strike run rate. There was no reason this horrific approach would have paid off and as a result they were back in pavilion without contributing much.
Umar Akmal was already lucky to get a chance when he slogged a shot off Johnson’s delivery that was taken by Simon Katich, only to Australian’s disappointment, it was no ball. It was not just inexperienced batting but poor shot selections as well. Kamran Akmal after getting a life because of a drop by Mike Hussey poked his bat at a delivery that was well outside his off stump.
Shoaib Malik looked sound in his technique but got desperate since wickets were falling at the other end. With 8 wickets down he attempted a slog and brought the curtain down on his innings. Umar Amin was the only batsman who played sensibly and showed how test cricket needs to be played. He was very unlucky to get out when he ducked under a delivery from Hilfenhaus and left his bat hanging in the air, the ball touched the bat and went straight into the hands of North.
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