Pakistan Devour Zimbabwe Before Lunch

Aizaz Cheema

Poor batting on the fourth afternoon which had Zimbabwe in the death throws, was always going to require more than a Packer Wacker to effect recovery and so it proved on a greatly abridged day five.

Pakistan quickly read the Zimbabwe second innings the last rights, with the final two wickets falling in just fifteen balls. Tatenda Taibu, who along with Kyle Jarvis, had raised the only resistance in an otherwise pitiful batting display, left at the end of the first over from Aizaz Cheema after chasing a wide ball into Adnan Akmal's gloves. Chris Mpofu followed suite in the next Cheema over and the suffering was ended. Cheema bagged another four wickets, giving him eight on debut. Mohammad Hafeez had of course picked up four free wickets made available to him in the Zimbabwean late middle order when they confused him with someone far greater than his self. Hafeez is subtly advanced on David Boon and his nudies but by the barest of margins. 

Facing less than 100 for the win, Pakistan got it over and done with quickly - before the lunch bell, in fact. Hafeez was again in the thick of it, hitting six 4's and a 6 in a run a minute, run a ball 38 before Price bowled him around his legs. Jarvis had Taufeeq Umar before that with a rising ball on off stump which was played with a fatally flawed bat angle and edged to Taibu. Akhar Ali went just before the finish, trying to heave a 6 into outer space but top edging to point where Greg Lamb took the catch but not before juggling, dropping and then re-catching it.

Zimbabwe had competed so well for the first ten sessions of this Test only to throw it away on the fourth day. Their trouble began much earlier when they dropped six sitters in the Pakistan first innings but the tight bowling of Price papered over most of those cracks. Alan Butcher has clearly done good work with this side but he can't be out on the field with them or beside them when a catch comes their way. Perhaps new assistant coach Alan Donald can enthuse the side with what's needed to concentrate all the way through a Test match. There is enough raw talent available to compete in games at this level, perhaps not to the same capacity as there was shortly before and after the turn of the millennium but not far off.

Mohammad Hafeez

Pakistan won as they pleased in the end. Hafeez was a deserved man of the match and Cheema made an impressive debut for a man of his "experience". Their batting in the first innings was at best ponderous and lacked the adventure it should have contained to attack this inexperienced Zimbabwe team. In the end, winners are grinners and losers can please themselves.

Zimbabwe's next Test outing is against New Zealand at the same venue in early December, whilst Pakistan start a three Test series against Sri Lanka in the United Arab Emirates, mid October, as home games are still impossible to stage with the threat of terrorism creating its sustained reek of instability.