Pakistan openers Abid Ali and Shan Masood smashed hundreds and forged a 278-run stand to flatten Sri Lanka in the second and final Test in Karachi yesterday.
Bundled out for a paltry 191 in the first innings, Pakistan finished day 3 on 395-2, with a commanding lead of 315 runs after a vastly improved batting display at the National Stadium.
Abid followed his century on debut in the drawn Rawalpindi Test with a career-best 174, which included 21 fours and a six.
Photo: AFP
Shan’s 135 was also his highest Test score, studded with three sixes and seven fours.
Skipper Azhar Ali (57) and Babar Azam (22) were the not out batsmen and will be hoping to bat Sri Lanka out of the contest and inch closer to a series victory.
On a pitch offering little to the bowlers, Abid and Shan batted fluently to deny Sri Lanka in the morning session, when they scored at 4.5 per over.
Photo: AFP
Abid took two off left-arm spinner Lasith Embuldeniya to bring up his century and it did not take long before Shan completed his hundred.
The previous time both Pakistan openers hit centuries in the same innings was in 2001, when Saeed Anwar and Taufeeq Umar got hundreds in a Multan Test against Bangladesh.
Lahiru Kumara finally separated the duo when Shan attempted a pull shot and the top-edge found Oshada Fernando at deep square-leg.
It was the end of Pakistan’s highest second-innings stand for any wicket.
Abid was looking good for a double century, but he perished LBW trying to flick Kumara.
The two-match series, part of the World Test Championship, marks Pakistan’s first Tests on home soil since a militant attack in 2009 on Sri Lanka’s team bus in Lahore.
AUSTRALIA-N ZEALAND
Reuters, MELBOURNE, Australia
New Zealand wicketkeeper B.J. Watling yesterday said he expects his team to continue their tactic of short-pitched bowling at the Melbourne Cricket Ground against Australia if the wicket proves conducive during the Boxing Day Test.
New Zealand lost the first Test in Perth by 296 runs, but rattled Australia’s batsmen with short, angled bowling in their second innings.
The second Test starts on Thursday next week.
Watling said that seamer Neil Wagner had proved tricky for the Australia batsmen.
Wagner “has done it for a very long period of time, he’s very skilled at it, he’s very accurate at it. And he used it well in Perth and put them under some pressure,” Watling told reporters. “But again, we’re going to have see actually what that wicket does. It might not be conducive to that type of bowling so we have to be adjustable.”
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