Zimbabwe Drop The Ball ... Again

Pakistan have all but been handed the Test at Bulawayo, despite Zimbabwe fighting back in the morning session and restricting their first innings deficit to only 54. Chris Mpofu and Ray Price combined to remove even the obdurate Younis Khan, whose long five hours of batting fell short of an 18th Test century by twelve runs. Christmas may have beaten him had he not been dismissed. Price's final figures of 2-69 from fifty overs left him short in the wickets column, thanks mainly to inept catching which continued on the fourth day.

Hafeez

Batting a second time, Zimbabwe fell apart through a combination of poor shots and projecting abilities onto bowlers that they didn't have. Apart from Craig Ervine who got one that keep a trifle low, none of the batsmen could claim that the bowlers were sending down hand grenades. Mohammed Hafeez picked up four wickets in an innings for the first time in his Test career and there's a reason its taken 26 Test innings to achieve this modest feat - he's really not that good a bowler. He's the net bowler that always fancies himself and gets a roll in the game by rattling the captain's stumps. Saeed Ajmal was the stand out and removed the two best Zimbabweans: Mawoyo by tricking him into looking for the doosra and getting him so far across that an offie took leg stump and doing the skipper Taylor for length and drawing out a sweep to a ball that wasn't that full.

Jarvis & Cheema scamper
for a single

Cheema picked up two free wickets in the top order. Sibanda continued his brain explosive approach as the Happy Hooker and flayed the wrong shot at the wrong ball and was out in ugly fashion by plopping the ball to mid on. Masakadza changed his mind somewhere between will I play or will I leave and dropped an inside edge back onto his castle as reward for his indecision.

In the end, only Tatenda Taibu and Kyle Jarvis showed any love for the game of Test cricket and their 66 unbeaten partnership has at least put a glimmer of hope back into the game that the top order snuffed out with their ineptitude. Such is the problem with cricket for the minnows at this level: opportunities are thrown away in a session after such sustained hard work.

Much is being made of the similarities in the position of this game to the Sydney Test of January 2010, where Australia performed a miracle on the last day. Bet it doesn't happen again!