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Pakistan vs Australia: Second Test - Day 2 live scores, blog

Did Michael Clarke make the wrong decision in sending England in to bat first at Edgbaston? Yes, yes he did. (image: AAP)
Roar Guru
31st October, 2014
237
2562 Reads

Australia are left with a mountain to climb if they are to get anywhere close to winning the second Test to square the series against Pakistan after a fruitless first day of play at Abu Dhabi. Join The Roar for a live coverage of the second day starting from 5:00pm (AEDT).​

When Australia went into the second Test match knowing they had to win the game to prevent Pakistan from taking their first series against them in two decades, they would have hoped for a better start than what they had the first day.

But they seem to have now endured what can easily be described as the worst-case scenario given the context of the series.

First they lost the toss on a track which was slower than the one at Dubai. Then they went wicketless for about 54 overs in the day, thereby allowing Younis Khan and Azhar Ali to add to the Pakistani century count.

In turn, they are now left with needing a miracle to have any chance of drawing level in the series.

At 2/304, it is Pakistan’s game to lose and while one has often seen the hosts go down from such scenarios, even that will be clutching at straws at the moment.

The ball did nothing for most part of the day. There was very little lateral movement and the two wickets that Australia manage to scalp were almost against the run of play.

The Pakistan batsmen defended when they wanted to, accelerated as they desired and towards the end, pulled down their shutters very easily without the fear of handing back the initiative to Australia.

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There were a couple of missed chances but when things aren’t meant to go your way, very little does.

Going into the second day, Australia will hope they can get rid of the two century-makers as soon as they can. They must be sick of watching Younis so calmly take them apart and looking at him bat, it does look like he is in that zone that the top batsmen often talk about.

A double-century beckons for him, the way he is going and a score of at least 500 for Pakistan is easily achievable as well. In fact, by looks of things, and given they just need a draw to win the series anyway, Pakistan could decide to grind Australia out of the game.

If the Aussie bowlers fail to extract anything like they did on the first day, expect Pakistan to bat out another full day and score as many too.

For Australia to have a chance, they need to trigger a collapse that sees Pakistan not score more than 400 and then bat themselves into a position where they can at least level things out on the first innings.

From then on, Australia will need to hope the pitch cracks up sufficiently to get the better of the Pakistani batsmen quickly enough in their second dig before having to bat last and chase down whatever target’s set for them.

For now, however, all of this sounds like a distant dream. And why not, given Australia have picked up just four Pakistani wickets over the last 166 overs they have bowled.

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Join me for ​this second day of ​​the second Test between Pakistan and Australia ​on Friday here and you can follow the live score of this game from ​5:00pm and post your comments ​in the section ​below.

Listen to Australia Pakistan live on Roar Radio:

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