As part of team England’s tour of Pakistan, third match between the host Pakistan and the England cricket team is going on these days in National Stadium Karachi. Today, it was third day of match. However, previously on first day, Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat first. Pakistan’s all team had got out on 304 runs. Afterwards, yesterday England played its first innings and its all team got out after scoring 354 runs. This way, England got 50 runs lead against Pakistan.
Today when third day of match started, Pakistan was playing its first innings, they had scored 21 runs and Pakistan didn’t had lost any wickets. However, things started to change soon as Pakistan started to loose wickets. So ultimately all team got out and Pakistan was able score just 216 runs in second innings. Now when we factor in the England’s lead from the first innings, on end of Pakistan’s second innings, it was only leading by 166 runs. This way England was given target of just 167 run to win the match.
From Pakistani batting side Babar Azam scored 54 and Saud Shakeel scored 53 and they were top scorers. After this openers had top most score, Abdullah Shafique scored 26 and Shan Masood scored 24 runs. Agha Salman contributed 21 runs and Nauman Ali scored just 15. Other than that no one was able to enter double figures.
From England bowling attack the debutant Rehan Ahmed took 5 wickets, Jack Leach took three, Joe Root and Mark Wood took 1 each. Ollie Robinson and Ben Stokes also bowled few overs each, however they did not took any wickets.
As Pakistan given England the target of just 167 runs to win the third test math, they started their second innings very confidently. They also scored very much faster. Today they just got 17 overs to play and in those they scored 112 runs and lost just 2 wickets. Zak Crawley got out after scoring 41 runs on 41 ball and other player who gone back to pavilion was Rehan Ahmed who scored just 10 runs on 8 balls.
Ben Duckett and Ben Stokes were still playing. Ben Duckett have scored 50 runs on 38 balls yet. England just needs to score 55 runs tomorrow and they have 8 wickets in hand. So tomorrow’s play will be just ‘walk in a park’ for England. They should very easily be able to score the remaining runs in first session of tomorrow’s play. By the way, Abrar Ahmed took wickets of Zak Crawley and Rehan Ahmed.
England’s Tour of Pakistan have been very productive for them. As they won first test match in Rawalpindi and won second test in Multan, both against Pakistan. And now, third one as well, they have clearly won, just formality remains.
All is not lost for Pakistan, as they found a new spinner Abrar Ahmed who took first 7 consecutive wickets in first innings of second test match of three match series against England. After that in every innings he played against england, he consistently performed and was alway amongst top wicket takers. Also, after three defeats, team Pakistan will have chance to analyse and improve the things which gone wrong. Hope they can learn from this series and do not repeat the mistakes in future, which they have done in this series.