Source : the age
Cameron Green, Matt Renshaw and teenager Ollie Peake stood up with the bat for Australia to help the tourists square the ODI series against Pakistan on another slow, low and turning pitch in Lahore overnight.
Sent in again, Australia’s tally of 9-231 was an improvement on 200 all out in the opener in Rawalpindi, and created sufficient scoreboard pressure to allow Nathan Ellis (4-33) and a quartet of spinners to strangle Pakistan’s chase.
Short’s part-time off-breaks were useful in collecting 3-36, while the fit-again Adam Zampa (1-30), Matt Kuhnemann (1-41) and Tanveer Sangha (1-22) all made breakthroughs.
This could easily have been another case of Australian stumbles against spin, particularly after Alex Carey dragged on first ball of the match and when Short and Marnus Labuschagne fell within five runs of each other, the visitors had slipped to 3-51, after being 4-68 in game one.
Following a duck in Rawalpindi when he was beaten on the back foot by a spinning delivery of good length, Green used his considerable height to get forward and cover the stumps, even if left-arm spinner Arafat Minhas (2-27) beat him on numerous occasions.
Inglis sculpted an intelligent 51 from 74 balls before he was beaten and bowled by a ball that didn’t bounce.
Renshaw (43) played another sensible innings as the Australians sought to lift the tempo in the latter part of the innings, before Peake (31 off 32 balls) contributed a note-perfect cameo that demonstrated why he is rated highly enough to be on this tour.
With a boundary and a six off the speedy Haris Rauf in the final over, Peake ensured that the target would go beyond 230. It was a 1990s type of first innings total, in conditions far harder for batting than most white ball players are used to.
“I know guys had some good conversations around training yesterday, just about individual method and how they were going to go about it,” tour captain Josh Inglis said.
“It was obviously dependent on the wicket, and it looked very similar to the other day.
“It was a pretty good total in the end. It would have been nice for someone to go on and get a big score, but it was just about building that partnership in those middle overs, just being nice and patient, and yeah, we thought anything over 200, we were right in the game.
“So, yeah, I thought the guys played it really well today. There were some good contributions across the board and some good partnerships on the batting front.”
While it could be said that it was Australia’s lone paceman in Ellis who did most of the damage in Australia’s successful defence, the Tasmanian’s skill range is very much suited to these kinds of surfaces.
He mixes up his pace and lengths expertly, with a back of the hand slower ball that’s one of the best in the world.
“It’s no secret that today it was pretty low and slow, and so it meant you can bring your length back and still hit the top of the stump,” Ellis said.
“Me being a little bit of a shorter bowler allows me to do that in most places anyway.
“But yeah, I think we saw the cutters and the slow balls working a lot today, and the ball started to tail and reverse swing through the 35 to 45 over mark.”
It was with a slower ball that Ellis struck first, prompting Maaz Sadaqat to drag on first ball after the fashion of Carey, before a precision delivery pinned Pakistan’s key man Babar Azam lbw.
With Kuhnemann, Short and Zampa all chiming in regularly while keeping down the scoring rate, Pakistan slid to 6-78.
Arafat and Shadab Khan shared a 50 stand, before Ellis returned for another lbw to set Australia on the path to the win.
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Daniel Brettig is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X.
