Shahrukh Khan
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akistan v West Indies, 1st Test, Lahore, 3rd day
Yousuf leads Pakistan dominance
The Bulletin by S Rajesh
November 13, 2006
West Indies 206 and 74 for 3 trail Pakistan 485 (Yousuf 192, Akmal 78, Malik 69, Hafeez 57) by 205 runs Scorecard and ball-by-ball details Pakistan how they were out West Indies how they were out
Mohammad Yousuf's monumental 192 put Pakistan in a position of immense strength at the end of the third day of the Lahore Test. Yousuf's knock, coupled with half-centuries by Kamran Akmal and Shoaib Malik, powered Pakistan to 485 with first-innings lead of 279. They further strengthened that position by reducing West Indies to 74 for 3 in 17 overs.
Pakistan's innings had vital contributions from the middle and lower-order batsmen, but the effort that made the difference was Yousuf's. After Pakistan lost two early wickets in the morning - including Malik's for 69 - Yousuf found an ally in Akmal, and the pair completely shut West Indies out of the match with a 148-run stand for the seventh wicket.
Like on the second day, Yousuf was unhurried in his approach. He caressed drives through the off side, picked off singles and twos on the leg, and batted with a languid elegance. He struggled first up against an inspired - and desperately luckless - Corey Collymore, survived a sharp chance to second slip, but once Collymore finished his nine-over spell, the pressure eased up and Yousuf did pretty much what he liked.
He danced down the pitch and deposited Dave Mohammed over long-off for six; and when he wanted to show his touch and artistry, he waited on the back foot and, with his wrists, tapped it to the third-man boundary. A double-hundred was there for the taking when Chris Gayle deceived him with a magnificently flighted delivery that drew him forward and then left him stranded.
If Yousuf was the glue that held Pakistan together, then the feisty Akmal was the one who provided the impetus with his stroke-filled 78. When he came in to bat, West Indies had reduced Pakistan from 265 for 4 to 285 for 6. Akmal being the last of the competent batsmen, another wicket then could have put West Indies in a position to restrict the deficit.
However, as has happened so often in the match, the moment West Indies seemed to be fighting back, Pakistan shut them out again. Intent on putting the bowlers on the back foot, Akmal attacked from the outset, driving fluently through the off side, and cutting and pulling with aplomb when the bowlers pitched it short. Fidel Edwards, easily the most lacklustre of the three fast bowlers, was pulled twice for fours in his first over of the day, before being driven through and over the off side when he pitched it up. It finally required Gayle's part-time offspin to end the partnership, but there was still more resistance from Pakistan's last-wicket pair. Danish Kaneria, too, swatted a couple of boundaries en route to his second-highest score in Tests.
A deficit of 279 was a huge disadvantage to start with in the second innings and it got even worse when both Daren Ganga and Gayle fell in the five overs before tea. Imran Farhat, not one of Pakistan's best fielders, ended a dismal Test for Ganga with a moment of sheer inspiration, picking up the ball and throwing down the stumps from square leg, while Gayle succumbed to a superb delivery which seamed away.
Brian Lara began with two crisply struck fours off his first two balls, and with Ramnaresh Sarwan was putting the innings back on track when umpire Asoka de Silva, ruled Sarwan lbw when the ball was clearly going over the stumps.
Edwards, the nightwatchman hung on with Lara till the light deteriorated and forced the umpires to call off play about 15 minutes before the scheduled close. But with two more days to go, the relief for West Indies is surely only a temporary one
Shahrukh Khan
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Pakistan v West Indies, 1st Test, Lahore, 4th day
Pakistan coast home by nine wickets
The Bulletin by S Rajesh
November 14, 2006
Pakistan 485 and 13 for 1 beat West Indies 206 and 291 (Lara 122, Chanderpaul 81, Gul 4-99) by 9 wickets Scorecard and ball-by-ball details West Indies how they were out
Brian Lara's brilliance shone brightly at the Gaddafi Stadium, but as has happened so often in his career, the final outcome was yet another Test defeat for West Indies, as Pakistan eased to a nine-wicket win to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. Lara stroked a classy 122 and, with Shivnarine Chanderpaul (81), threatened a West Indian revival, but his dismissal sparked a familiar collapse, as Umar Gul finished with a match haul of nine wickets to leave Pakistan with the formality of scoring just 13 to seal the victory.
When play started this morning, West Indies' fortunes were always likely to hinge on Lara's performance, and that's exactly how it transpired. While Lara was going strong, with Chanderpaul offering him solid support, the pitch seemed to be a batting paradise and runs were scored at a canter. The moment Lara left, though, regular service resumed, though Chanderpaul offered dogged resistance despite being unwell. Had it not been for some sloppy work by the close-in fielders and Kamran Akmal, the wicketkeeper, the match would have finished even earlier than it eventually did.
Lara's first-innings effort, by his own admission, wasn't a fluent one, but here he was in charge from the first ball he faced. He had started off with fours off the first two balls he faced yesterday, and was similarly in control from the start today. Driving exquisitely through the off side, he repeatedly drilled boundaries with typical flourish - the front foot going out in a huge stride, the bat coming down in a lovely arc and finishing up in a huge follow-through. He uncannily found the gaps almost every time as well, ensured that the score kept moving and denied Pakistan the opportunity to attack with too many fielders around the bat.
Lara's was the key innings, but given West Indies' plight at the start of the day, they needed more than a one-man act to make this a contest, and Chanderpaul filled the support role perfectly. He was solid in defence, and yet didn't miss out on scoring opportunities, easing the ball into the gaps on both sides of the wicket. He struggled to combat dehydration after lunch and regularly needed medical attention on the field, but he hung on, not bothered by the number of times Gul passed the outside edge of his bat, or by the reprieve handed to him by Akmal, who missed a regulation stumping when Chanderpaul was on 56. Till he finally miscued a pull off Shahid Nazir, West Indies were in contention to at least stretch the contest into the final day.
Pakistan's bowlers had a mixed day - Gul was outstanding, getting plenty of seam movement and some reverse swing later in the afternoon to trouble Chanderpaul. Nazir was steady, Danish Kaneria quite disappointing, while Abdul Razzaq was pedestrian. Nazir gave them the early breakthrough by getting rid of the nightwatchman Fidel Edwards, but thereafter there was little for them to celebrate for the next three hours as Lara and Chanderpaul took charge.
Lara began proceedings by clipping and steering the fast bowlers for fours, and that set the trend for the morning. Each of his landmarks came in style too: a glorious straight-drive off Gul brought Lara his fifty, and he crashed the same bowler off the back foot through point to get to his 33rd Test century, and his first in Pakistan. Though he was the best bowler on view, Gul clearly came off second-best against Lara, going for 47 runs from 56 balls.
As the partnership grew, so too did Pakistan's frustration: there were regular appeals against Lara, and while most of them didn't have much merit, one - an lbw shout off Shoaib Malik, when Lara was on 80 - should clearly have been given. The deficit was getting whittled in quick time when Hafeez - who had earlier dropped a tough chance from Lara - got one to pitch, straighten and beat his attempted sweep. Simon Taufel agreed that the ball would have hit the stumps, and Pakistan finally had their man.
With the biggest barrier out of the way, Pakistan moved in for the kill. Gul took care of Dwayne Bravo while Denesh Ramdin became Kaneria's only victim of the innings. The second new ball then took care of the last three wickets, with Chanderpaul finally miscuing a pull after a gutsy 178-ball effort. Gul was denied his second five-for of the match, but finished off the West Indian innings.
Pakistan were made to work harder than they would have thought to get to the target of 13 - Hafeez fell for 1, and more than five overs were bowled - but those were small crumbs as Pakistan pocketed the big prize
Three contrasting half-centuries against a largely insipid bowling attack turned the opening day of the Multan Test into a one-horse race. Batting first under overcast skies, Pakistan's top four cashed in on a flat pitch, erratic fast bowling and lethargic fielding to motor their team along to 263 for 4 at the end of the day. A bit more of this and the series would be sealed.
Imran Farhat, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf enjoyed varying degrees of fortune and each batsman was more in control than the previous. Farhat's was a streaky 74, one where risky flashes came off more because of the lack of bowling quality than his audacity; Younis's was a gritty 56, a dog-fight at the start and more fluent later; and Yousuf's was an assertive 56, commanding at the start before turning edgy towards the end.
Before all of these was a handy knock from Mohammad Hafeez and at the end of day was an even more authoritative cameo from Inzamam-ul-Haq. Amid all this a regulation catch was fluffed - Daren Ganga let off Yousuf for the second time in two games - and a couple of tough chances weren't seized. The inertia on the field was palpable. When new batsmen are greeted with defensive fields, you know only one side's turned up for the contest.
West Indies made a couple of tough decisions with their team selection. The dropping of Ramnaresh Sarwan, their vice-captain, came as a shock but it was the other choice - Daren Powell replacing Fidel Edwards - that was of immediate concern. Struggling with his length, Powell undid the good work that Corey Collymore and Jerome Taylor had begun and allowed the openers considerable leeway. Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo were high on economy but a lack of overall consistency allowed Pakistan to cruise.
All four wickets that fell were owing to poor shot selection. Hafeez, by far the more confident of the two openers, was cruising along at 36, easing drives and gauging the swing, when he edged a short and wide one from Taylor to the wicketkeeper. Farhat continued to walk the tightrope after bringing up his half-century, increasingly looking edgy against the ball moving away. Throughout his knock he wasn't totally in control, far from it, and survived thanks to freebies that were being handed out. The half-volleys were struck crisply down the ground and several errors in length were punished square of the wicket. Powell, playing in his 18th Test, squandered a chance to utilise the overcast conditions, and struggled to hit the right length early on.
Taylor, his countryman with half the Test experience, showed more fight, running in quick and generating disconcerting lift through the day. He consistently cranked up more than 85mph and occasionally hurried the batsmen on a shirtfront. He was rewarded with two wickets - Farhat poked at a full-length ball angling away and Younis, after a battling half-century, failed to keep a wide bouncer down. Younis was tied up in all sorts of knots early on but unlike Farhat, he bided his time and displayed a more bloody-minded approach. A steady drizzle at the end of the session came with its share of problems but once play resumed - about 12 minutes after lunch - he gritted it out for close to an hour. At one stage he'd managed 24 off 76 balls but soon began expressing himself with some bludgeoned fours.
Yousuf, his partner in many a mammoth partnership this year, was the more composed of the duo and steadily motored to his half-century. He was quick on the pull, especially against Taylor, and his silken wrists took care of the over-pitched ones. Unlike the rest of the top-order, he didn't have to face the bowling at its toughest and made hay when the sun came out. The two most impressive bowlers of the day were wretchedly unlucky: Collymore, typically accurate, was unlucky to watch several deliveries miss the bat and Gayle, teasing with his sharp offbreaks, didn't have too much fortune either.
The last and only time West Indies played a Test match in Multan was back in January 1981, in a game mostly remembered for Sylvester Clarke's infamous brick-throwing incident. More such sloppy bowling and fielding from his men, in a game they just can't afford to lose, and Brian Lara might just be tempted to move towards the boundary line and hunt for a few red rectangular debris.
wafakadard
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Lara 200*
150.4 Lara, 3 runs, good length delivery outside the off stump, Lara goes on the backfoot and drives it to sweeper cover, that is his :) 9th TEST DOUBLE CENTURY!!! What a magnificent innings this has been!!!
Shahrukh Khan
Age: 124
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Farhat leads Pakistan's fightback
The Bulletin by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan
November 22, 2006
Pakistan 357 and 213 for 2 (Farhat 70*, Yousuf 56*, Younis 56) trail West Indies 591 (Lara 216, Gayle 93, Bravo 89, Ganga 82, Kaneria 5-181) by 21 runs Scorecard and ball-by-ball details West Indies how they were out Pakistan how they were out
Just when it appeared as if West Indies had assumed a vice-like grip on Multan Test, Pakistan hit back through an assertive batting performance, leaving a draw the most likely result. Led by Lara's cracking double-century, West Indies managed an imposing first-innings lead but the flat nature of the surface, and lack of a quality spinner, thwarted their bid to force home the advantage.
Facing a 234-run deficit, Pakistan chose to smash their way out of trouble with three of their top-order batsmen easing to half-centuries. Imran Farhat's stylish 70 not out was buttressed with aggressive, yet contrasting, half-centuries from the two Ys - Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf - and it would require a sensational collapse for either team to force a result from here on.
Farhat's was an innings of two halves. The first 64 deliveries he faced produced just 15 runs and, uncharacteristically, not a single boundary. He endured a few jitters - swishing at the air with his customary wafts outside off, uncertain about whether to play or leave - and often preferred the edge of the bat rather than the middle. The eye-catching part of the innings followed, with spanking cover-drives pinging the advertising hoardings. His innings should have ended on 44 but Shivnarine Chanderpaul, despite a fine attempt, couldn't latch on to a smoked cover-drive. Once let off, there was no stopping him; the extravagant flourish at the end of each drive made them that much more elegant.
He was probably helped early on by Younis's urgency. The duo came together at the fall of the first wicket - Mohammad Hafeez couldn't keep out a speedy incutter from Jerome Taylor, in a post-lunch spell where he incessantly targeted the stumps. Younis telegraphed his intentions the moment he entered, scampering a single off his first ball, attempting an ambitious pull off his second, and flicking to midwicket off his fourth. He didn't hold back against the wide ones, cutting fiercely to the point boundary; with one such shot he became the tenth Pakistani batsman to cross 4000 Test runs.
Aggressive fields helped - West Indies had no other option but to put fielders around the bat and hope for an edge - and the belter of a surface provided a perfect stage.
Yousuf, the other half-centurion, managed the most fluent innings of the day. On his way to becoming the highest scorer in a calendar year, he simply carried on in his magnificent form, easing effortlessly into drives. He was lucky on 51, not offering a stroke and being rapped on the pads, but Daryl Harper, somewhat inexplicably, preferred to give him the benefit of the doubt. That moment of uncertainty over, he continued his torment.
Pakistan's bowlers found some joy as well, once Brian Lara had brought up his ninth Test double-century. He needed to be cautious early on in the day to counter the dangerous reverse-swing that Umar Gul and Shahid Nazir were generating. He brought up his double-century with a pushed three through cover-point and continued to bide his time against accurate bowling.
On 216, though, when he was just one run short of the highest score by a West Indian batsman in Pakistan (Rohan Kanhai's 217 at Lahore in 1958-59) he was tempted into a false stroke, inducing a leading edge off Kaneria to long-on. Kaneria went on to earn a pyrrhic victory, finishing with 5 for 181 while Abdul Razzaq, who was also taken apart yesterday, cleaned up the last two wickets.
Shahrukh Khan
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Pakistan v West Indies, 2nd Test, Multan, 5th day
Yousuf's 191 earns a draw
The Bulletin by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan
November 23, 2006
Pakistan 357 and 461 for 7 (Yousuf 191, Razzaq 80, Farhat 76, Younis 56) drew with West Indies 591 Scorecard and ball-by-ball details Pakistan how they were out
Reiterating his monstrous appetite for runs, Mohammad Yousuf steered Pakistan out of choppy waters, guiding them to safety on the final day of the second Test at Multan. Falling in the 190s for the second time in as many Tests, and third in the year, Yousuf's superb knock allowed Pakistan to hang on to their 1-0 lead, a position from where they cannot lose the series.
Yousuf compiled his seventh century of the year, a feat previously achieved by only Viv Richards and Aravinda de Silva, and ensured a stalemate, the first in five Tests at Multan. The innings showed his ability to stick it out against the moving ball, in a tricky morning spell when the game could have slipped away, as well as his penchant for batting long periods. It wasn't a flawless effort - edges, dropped catches and close lbw calls went his way - but the value of the innings cannot be underestimated, denying West Indies a rare Test win in Pakistan.
The crucial period of the day was midway through the first session. The new ball provided West Indies with a window of opportunity and their fast bowlers tried their best to capitalise. Not for the first time, Corey Collymore went through a luckless period, enduring three close lbw appeals - one against Yousuf appeared plumb - and a rash of edges that didn't carry to slip. Runako Morton's dropped catch at second slip, when Yousuf wafted at a wide one from Daren Powell, compounded their frustration.
Yousuf was fortunate to hang in there. Collymore's canny seam movement had both him and Inzamam-ul-Haq in a tangle - a number of deliveries passed perilously close to the edge of the bat after the movement left both batsmen clueless. Jerome Taylor's speed, with his ability to angle the ball into the right-hander and make it straighten, proved to be an ideal foil. Powell, too, put in a much-improved effort, and complemented them effectively. Inzamam's 38-ball 10, when he was hardly his authoritative self, ended when he missed a quick Taylor delivery that held its line after pitching on off. Soon Shoaib Malik, after an equally painstaking innings, undercut Powell onto the stumps and raised visions of a West Indian victory.
Yousuf, though, refused to budge. Amid the uncertainty, he punished the wide deliveries and the manner in which he brought up his hundred - swiveling around to execute a regal pull - conveyed the kind of form he was in. After the lunch break, with the ball older and pitch easing out, he had little to worry about. Cruising against both spin and pace, he eased to his 150 and was closing in on Richards' record number of runs (1710) in a calendar year. With one Test to go, he still needs another 148, not the sort of score that would challenge a man who's main failing appears to be the nervous 190s.
Abdul Razzaq gave him company for most of the day and, unlike in the first innings, expressed himself with more freedom. Making up for the forgettable performance in the first four days of the game, when he was ineffective with both bat and ball, he reeled off fours as if in one-day mode and dominated the spinners. He fell in a quick bid to bring up his hundred and played his part in completely shutting out the game.
It was a rather tame end to a game that had been uplifted by Brian Lara's genius. His magnificent 216 led a strong West Indian performance but their lapses on the field, and lack of penetration in the spin department, cost them dear. Taylor's spirit and the fight shown by the batting line-up are two of the positives they will take with them to Karachi, as they attempt to become only the second visiting side (England being the first) to win a Test in what is surely a Pakistani fortress.
At the end of the game, though, one must spare a thought for Collymore, arguably the unluckiest bowler in recent memory. The scorecard will tell you that he ended with 2 for 133 in the 59 overs he delivered but that doesn't take into account the umpteen edges that fell short, lbw appeals that were turned down and chances that went down. Endowing him with some luck may require powers of witchcraft but if the rest of the side can emulate his untiring persistence, the series may end on a happy note after all.
7*6
