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Asif bowled well without reward (could have had 3 wickets on another day) had Hayden dropped twice, and pinned Martyn lbw on first viewing, but Channel 9 didn't want to show a replay for some reason. Kaneria is amongst the wickets already and looking hungry. We just need some help from the other end (and the umpires!) Last edited by Shaka : 03-01-2005 at 01:55 AM. |
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| Ok guys, all that promising talk has quickly gone out of the window as Martyn and Ponting have put on century stand with almost unoticeable ease - Australia went through the entire post lunch session without losing a wicket and scoring at up and above 4.5 an over to progress to 228-2. Damein Martyn was by defination perfect. Never played a false stroke, and for my money apart from one play and miss against Mohammad Asif (who impressed me with his temprement by the way) hit everything right from the middle of his bat. Although Ricky Ponting on the other hand finished unbeaten on 111 (his first ton as skipper and also the first in about 17/18 matches if I'm not wrong) Matyn for my money played better. Boy, our we going to rue that dropped catch of Punter by Akmal...In short both played superbly , timing and placement was impeccable and they played some glorious shots - classical almost in one sense - not enjoyable though if you're in my position, another thing if you're an Aussie. With Shoaib off the field for much of the session and hence unable to bowl when he came later on we looked completely clueless. And I have still no idea of how we are going to break this partnership. I hope we regroup in the final session, and don't just give in. Australia were in a similar sort of position yesterday and they came back strongly by taking 7 wickets in the post tea session, I don't expect us to do that but at least we can try and keep things a bit tighter than we are at the moment. Run rate of four and a half? Well, that's speaks for it self, doesn't it. Kaneria from the looks of things (and certainly from what Bill Lawry and Heals think) is not mixing up things as much - and just because he got Punter to play and miss a few early mildly spinning leggies he's not tried bowling enough of his wrong ones or even the top spinner - hasn't even tried using the rough enough. Consequently he's not got any rythm going and he was being creamed for boundaries through the off side even with 6 fielders in there. Totally absymal. And bad news considering he's one of two of our strike bowlers.... Mohammad Asif, well he kept running in, but unfortunately he showed a bit of inexperience, and bowled a lot of Ponting's strengths, Punter scored majority of his runs in the leg side, including some very exquisitive shots from balls on his pads. Although he did reverse it a bit. Waqar Younus said though that you need more pace than he has to make it count. Which give me hopes that if Akhtar can bowl a decent enough spell of two after tea we might still manage to keep our selves in this game. At the moment though, and this rate, it's all flying away from us very, very quickly indeed. Fingers crossed. Hopefully these two (Punter and Martyn) can make some sort of a mistake. |
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| Stumps - Day 2: Pakistan 304 Australia 340/4 (86.0 ov) Gilchrist 17* Ponting 155* Australia lead by 36 runs with 6 wickets remaining in the 1st innings (Kaneria 30 overs 4 maidens 3-106 Naved-ul-Hassan 14 overs 2 maidens 1-61) (Damein Martyn 67 Michael Clarke 35 ) |
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| A great contrast, here, between what England were able to do with SA in control (stifle the game with negative bowling and ensure the game didn't get away from them, limiting Kallis' scoring opportunities and frustrating the home side) and what Pakistan have managed (basically letting Australia score at twice the run rate thant SA managed.. and conceding in 2 sessions a lead for which Australia have not been made to toil). I really do think hthis is the most worrying side of things for Pakistan right now: even if they bowl Australia out in 4 sessions (a good result) they will already have all but lost the game. |
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| You are right Rachael, especially considering the wicket was not as good as the wicket in SA, the sruface was bit on the slower side, turning every now and then, not easy for new batsmen, but once you get in, and make your self set, it's another matter. But to be fair to us, we really had only one proper bowler today in Kaneria, who as always kept on running in and bowl. And he picked 3 wickets. Rather stupidly though, he did give a send off to Clarke and that cost him his entire match fee. From what I saw it clearly looked like he did say some swear word. Thankfully I'm not good at lip reading, and I didn't undertsand, Ranjan Mudagalle did though. Kaneria's been watching too many movies I think...stupid thing to do what he did really. Stupid is all what I can describe it as. It is interesting however that Ricky Ponting had to say this when he was asked about the incident: "I've only just found out about it and when it happened I was at the other end. I was totally unaware of it." Shoaib hardly bowled just 4 overs in the 1st sesssion, none in the 2nd session and just 6 in the final session...10 in total. And whenever he did, his niggles meant he was far, far from his best. People in the box said he had back and hamstring complains and might also be struggling with a new pair of boots...I'm trying to recall the last time when Shoaib didn't complain of some niggle while in a match. Must have been some time back. Apparently I can't recall. It really is frustrating. Why the hell can't he keep him self fit. He's a profesional. He's paid to play. And it's ridicilous that he keeps on getting hurt every now and then. Ridicilous really that 4 of our best/better players are all siiting on the bench as we've had to resort to fielding a virtual 2nd XI team. Why the hell can't we maintain the standards of fitness expected of paid professionals? Of the four people injuried, only Shoaib Malik can be spared of criticism. Inzi, has had back complains for a year now, and he SHOULD, really SHOULD have got done and dusted with this injury from before hand. Team like ours, already thin on batting cannot afford its best batsmen (coincidentially also captain) for consecutive tests every now and then. Apparently Sami also carried this injury going into the Melbourne test match (that begs the question why players who aren't 100% fit eligible for selection?), and my opinion is that he worsened it while playing. And can I really say anything about Razzaq's illness...or mystery illness as it is being called. Ridicilous. Utterly ridicolous. We're lucky in that respect that this is only 2 test series and there are no back to back games...I wonder what we had done had we had a more gruelling schedule than we do. It really is very frustrating when you can't field your best side because of injuries. And I have always said that trainers and physios are not our team's case reponsible, most players, with the exception of few I would say, them selves are rather casual about their fitness, and perhaps don't work on it as hard as they should. I really think our quickies could do with a season or two with some no-jokes-when-it's-crunch-time type trainer, some one like Dave Roberts for instance. With the more experienced Shoaib not avialble for most of the time the other guys were way too inexperienced to expect them to do any miracles...Rana 2nd game...Asif 1st game...the side we seleted here Rachael is basically out of desperation, this is no way near close to our strongest team....and I'm sure Ricky Ponting will tell you that this is one of his less demanding test hundreds out of the 21 he's scored. With the full strength team and perhaps a little bit more motivation I would have expected us to do better but with this attack...we were always hoping for miracles. Last edited by Zainub : 03-01-2005 at 11:08 AM. |
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I disagree with your comments about the number of sessions too. What matters is how many runs Pakistan get Australia for, not how many sessions Australia take to score those runs. You win Tests by scoring runs, and taking runs. The number of sessions you take only comes into play in matches such as the ones in the England-SA series (two evenly matched sides). When there is a yawning chasm between the two teams, and matches are not going past lunch on Day 4, then it is no use trying to contain, and delay the run scoring by negative bowling. That will, at most, delay the final acts to the third session on Day 4 instead of the first - hardly a resounding result! What Pakistan should try and do is build up pressure and then take wickets. If that costs a few runs, so be it. Given the nature of Pakistan's wicket taking bowlers (a fast bowler and a leggie, both with very high strike rates but poor runs per over), Pakistan's aim should always be to take Australian wickets - our bowlers are not good enough to contain their batsmen, and in a Test match containment is often a counter-productive strategy. Containment only works when like England, you can be sure that you have the batsmen to bat for around 7-8 in the two innings. In Pakistan's case, our batsmen would be lucky to last 6 sessions for their 20 wickets, hence time never comes into it. Of course, this does not mean you give away silly runs as Pakistan did for most of today; free hits and silly runs, with no plan, are no way to build up pressure and take wickets!
__________________ A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes Mark Twain |
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| The thing is, Maranello... the most proven way to build pressure on batsmen is to dry up their favoured run scoring options.. dry up their scoring.. and thereby encourage them to play shots they prefer to avoid. Classic example was Giles to Smith: line, lenght and field placings meant he normal options were out of the question.. so he first got frustrated.. and then tried something he ain't very good at playing. Result: Giles got him twice in 7 balls! There was a point in the last SA innings when Giles was hit for a single, solitary four: he put his hands on his head and then kicked the dirt in frustration because it undid the good work of the previous 4-5 overs (and undermined the good work of his bowling partner). One way or the other your bowlers are going to have to crack that: Akhtar might be able to get away with merely being at Brett Lee levels of control (pretty damn poor).. but you can only, really, afford one such player: the others really do need to start becoming to score off as (to take good rather than stunning examples) Kallis, Vettori and Collymore.. or Vaas, Giles and Khan. That's not setting the bar toooo high.. not like aiming to emulate McGrath, Gillespie and Warne! Last edited by Rachael : 03-01-2005 at 08:00 PM. |
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| Sure, but a legspinner often has to give away a few runs to get wickets, even good ones have done that; Warne of course is an exception in his control and accuracy. I agree that building up pressure includes drying up the runs, roughing up the batsman, a bit of verbals, etc, and Pakistan seemed pretty inept at all of that. However, what Pakistan should not go for is the negative tactics Vaughan went for on Day 1 - Vaughan is leading a high-performing team, defending a 1-0 win in a series, he can afford to play for a draw. Pakistan know that a draw against this Australian side is unachievable for them, hence they can only go for small victories (eg Shoaib over Hayden) in minor battles - the war was never there to win. On the whole, Pakistan need a good bowling attack (2 or 3 others bowlers) to back Akhtar and Kaneria. Maybe Umar Gul, Shabbir and Shoaib Malik when he is fit to bowl can do that role, the various options tried in this series definitely can not.
__________________ A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes Mark Twain |
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| Your point about the leggie is well made: they've always, as far as I can tell, been thought of as of use only in a team which expects to have runs to play with. That said.. Kumble's pretty tidy :-) Thing is.. if Kaneria and Akhtar are, between them, going to go for lots of runs.. then you really do need 3 other bowlers rather than 2 (so that you can cope when they are getting carted)..and yet you need to find some extra batting from somewhere to give them the extra runs they need. Maybe that's why Fletcher is putting so much effort into Malik and Razzaq: he reckons Pakistan will need to bat down to 9 :-D |
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I sort of mentioned this in another discussion to that Australia seem to have that insticnt as a team which enables them to confront potentiall tricky situations in a match with apparent ease. They are so use to winning that when they are difficult position their mentally in the frame of mind where they assume things will eventually end up their way, obviously this has had a few downsides (like Adelaide last year vs India, and Sydney the year before that vs England) but even those occasions are few and far between. They're just a dammed great team! As Sri Lanka should to some extent early last year that perhaps the best way to give your self a chance of bowling out Australia cheaply is to try and restrict their scoring options, that brings frustration, and consequently drwas batsmen into playing poor shots to trying a score big runs and break the shakles. Almost all of the Australian batsmen irrespective of wheather they are stroke maker or grafters like scoring their runs at a fairly lively pace at will not be comfortable with being bogged down, at least this was the case for much of Steve Waugh's captaincy time, they have learned to adapt better under Punter, whose proven to be more flexible in his tactics but their is always this aspect to their batting as was shown yesterday by the dismissals of Clarke and Martyn (both stumped of Kaneria trying to hit out). Australia work on this theory all the time - bowl dot bowls, build up pressure and wickets will follow. We have been unable to that since our best strike bowlers in recent times both have tendency to be taken for runs, we seem to rely too much on some one bowling a very good spell from one end, bowling un playable deliveries ball after ball to build up pressure of any sort. And if we're to be a strong test side to be reckoned with in future, that must change, some one must be found who is willing to do all the donkey work. Kaneria, will usually not go for more than three at most if he has setteled into some sort of rythym, and the conditions are conducive in some respect or the other. It is when he is bowling in adverse conditions for spin bowling (I remember for instance a match in NZ, probably at Christchurch, it was the 1st test) that he tends to get taken for more runs, especillay runs coming in boundaries. Shoaib on the other hand will always tend to go for runs, even when he is taking wickets and bowling well, as he has been of late. His pace, as his biggest asset as well as his biggest weaknesses. In this case, of late we have been relying some what on Abdul Razzaq (who I just checked out Rachael, perhaps much to your delight, has again averaged lesser than Sami in this series so far, although he has bowled fewer overs)...if he could develope into a sort of bowler who we could bank on to get us 15-20 overs per innings and not go for more thant 2.5 an over, take 1 wicket, 2 would be a bounus, I'd love that, Woolmer would too. |
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