Australian skipper Pat Cummins on Wednesday (16th March) talked about his side’s performance after the second Test against Pakistan in Karachi ended in a draw.
The second match between Pakistan and Australia saw an exciting contest between bat and ball. Both the teams displayed sensational performances and gave it everything to win the match.
After Australia’s heroics with both bat and ball in their first innings, it almost seemed that they would pave their way to an easy victory. The Pat Cummins-led side first scored 556 runs and then bundled out Pakistan for 148 runs.
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Instead of following on, Australia decided to bat on once again and set hosts a target of 506 runs to chase after declaring their second innings on 97/2. The visitors then looked clueless as Pakistan made a great comeback after a poor show in the first innings.
Even though Australia had their moments and were on top at some stages, centuries from Babar Azam (196), Mohammad Rizwan (104*) and 96 from Abdullah Shafique kept Pakistan in the game and made sure that match ended in a draw.
Speaking to the reporters at the press conference Pat Cummins said that he would’ve taken 0-0 after two games if anyone would've told him ahead of the series in such conditions. He remarked that batting at Day 3 gave them a chance to go for the win.
"Coming over here in these conditions, at the start of the series if you had said it's going to be nil-all after two games, we would probably take that. In terms of the tactics, I think overall I wouldn't change too much, to be honest. Batting into day three gave us that chance to really have a crack at them on day three - it probably went better than we expected,” Pat Cummins said.
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Australia was sloppy on the field. First, Steve Smith dropped Abdullah Shafique on 20, who went on to score 96 runs. Head and Labuschagne gave away life to Azam twice while Khawaja also spilled Rizwan on 96.
Pat Cummins rued missed opportunities and admitted that had they taken those chances it could’ve given them a different scenario.
“But over here the wickets are pretty good. We carved up two and a half days of the best time on the wicket hoping that it was going to break up on day four and five. If we took a couple of those catches it might have been a different scenario. I thought we gave ourselves a really good opportunity in this test match, especially after the first three innings of the game,” he said.
The third Test between Pakistan and Australia will be played from 21st March in Lahore.
(Reuters inputs)
