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Australia are hanging by the thread going into the fifth and the final day of the second Test at Abu Dhabi against Pakistan and will need a near miracle to save the Test match. You can follow the live blog of the fifth day of this second Test starting at 5:00pm (AEDT).
It was another day that almost totally belonged to Pakistan. They had Younis Khan and Azhar Ali bat much like they had in the first innings except that the Aussies did finally manage to get Younis out a tad earlier this time.
Their woes only began after that.
Misbah ul Haq joined Azhar Ali and batted like a man possessed.
This was the same Misbah who had run into such a batting form trouble that he, despite being the ODI captain, had dropped himself from the final game of their series against Australia.
This was the same Misbah who is often ridiculed for his inability to accelerate in the shorter format of the game.
This was also the same guy who hammered multiple records in a short span of a session or so; a couple you would never expect from him – a record-breaking quickest half-century and a record-equalling fastest century.
In the process he also became the second batsman in the series to score a century in each innings of a Test. Just two balls later, Azhar Ali joined him to become the third.
The pair had added 141 for the fourth wicket in only 17 overs to leave the Aussies battered on the field, and by the time the visitors were back for the chase, they were left with an impossible 603 runs to get.
What it also did was to take a few overs away from the Pakistani bowlers to try and capture the 10 Australian wickets.
Still in the 48 overs that Pakistan had on the fourth day, they managed to carve out four of those 10. With Brad Haddin still struggling with his shoulder injury, it remains to be seen if he will be batting on the final day but even if he does, it could get difficult for him to survive.
In essence, the ongoing partnership between Steven Smith and Mitchell Marsh is the one that needs to do most of the work on the final day.
So far they have survived 122 balls to push the game into the final day but with more than 500 more balls still to be bowled, their resistance on the penultimate day was only a tip of an iceberg.
Pakistan will be inching towards quickly running through the rest and they have the bowling to do that too. The question is how long can the Aussies hold out.
Join me for this fifth day of the second Test between Pakistan and Australia on Monday here and you can follow the live score of this game from 5:00pm (AEDT) and post your comments in the section below.
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