Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Watch cricket highlights: Day 1 of the 3rd Test – Pakistan vs England played at the Oval on August 18, 2010
Scoreline: England 233 all out Matt Prior 84 no, Stuart Broad 48 | Wahab Riaz (on debut) 5, Mohammad Asif 3
Pakistan 48/1 Yasir Hameed 36 no
All series, when England bats, there’s a pattern. Cook looks so painful, even those baying for his exit for years don’t derive any pleasure from it anymore. One of the commentators comes up with a split screen and analyzes what’s wrong with him, while you idly scratch around wondering why Bell isn’t playing and occasionally yell – at least England would have a close-in catcher who’d take good catches rather than making everything look like a close chance. Then Strauss entertains, but you wait for him to go since Trott is too busy fiddling. And finally KP comes in. And you realize, Asif’s also been waiting for him. C’mon KP. Asif’s been bowling great, but do something about it.
Unrelated, but if anyone’s still reading this and didn’t watch the Somerset semi, do watch the Jos Buttler knock – he’s also apparently a keeper.
Yasir Hameed has been popping in as a sub and today provided a reminder of one of the strongest memories from the 2004 tour of Pakistan by India – his drives through the offside. Also good to see that Pakistan too believe Azhar Ali is a player for the future and have stuck with him.
Given the circumstances under which Salman Butt assumed captaincy, you wouldn’t want to criticize anything about his captaincy, but would rather wait for him to ease into it. And there seem to be signs of this finally happening. Forget his field placings etc. Today, with Riaz having a great debut and Aamer looking tired (as Michael Holding has been predicting right from the tests vs Aus) there was this moment (think i might have forgotten to add it in the highlights today) when everyone around was congratulating and generally being gungho around Riaz. Salman was sensitive enough to step away and have a special one-on-one chat with Amir – he’s after all, just 18. Afridi was someone teammates naturally warmed to – he’s got that sort of presence. And now it looks like the first step to being captain is slowly happening with Salman.
Think, Riaz’s performance needs to be taken in context with Asif bowling beautifully at the other end. Also, looks like he watched a couple of heavyduty action flicks just before walking out today.
