ABU DHABI // On paper this game will come to look like the kind of dull draw Test cricket can do without, much like the Test between these two sides at the same venue two years ago.
Big third innings scores, a few hundreds, long, untroubled partnerships and equally long wicketless spells. The surface at Zayed Cricket Stadium, as sometimes happens, was spicier on the first few days than the last couple.
Essentially it will not be far from the truth that the game was dull, but that would be to account only for the last day and a half. For three and a half this Test had possibilities.
Most pointed to a Pakistan win, though as the fourth day drew on, it seemed briefly as if Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal and Prasanna Jayawardene might pull off something incredible.
They did not have the time or the bowling to punctuate that day of resistance with a win, though in reaching this stalemate, having been 179 behind and then, effectively, seven for four at the start of the fourth day, theirs was the moral victory.
“We had to give a good fight when it came to the fourth day and we had to bat through,” said Mathews, the Sri Lanka captain who, with knocks of 91 and an unbeaten 157, did more than any to provide that fight.
“We knew that Pakistan is very sharp in their bowling attack, so we had to concentrate quite hard and had to come up with a good performance to either save or win the game.”
Pakistan’s only interest on the final day was to see how their top three would fare.
Changed in nature by the return of Mohammad Hafeez and yet another change in the opening combination with the induction of Ahmed Shahzad, their first-innings failure meant that a scare on the final day was not beyond the realms of possibility.
Hafeez, in particular, had been under scrutiny on his return, having made a comeback into the Test XI mostly on superlative one-day international form.
Though he made three hundreds in the recent ODI series here, his last 11 Test innings before this had produced only 113 runs, with a highest of 22.
But he put together a typically composed and fluent 80 on the final day and along with a neat 55 from Shahzad soothed Pakistan’s nerves after Sri Lanka had declared on 450 half an hour before lunch.
The target, of 302 in a minimum of 67 overs, was never really under threat, though Misbah-ul-Haq said later they might have considered going for it had they not lost Shahzad immediately after tea.
With their attack, and the position they were in, Pakistan might feel rightly disappointed at having let slip an opportunity of a Test win.
But Misbah is nothing if not in a state of permanent equilibrium. He saw the result, ultimately, as the way of five-day cricket.
“It happens in Test match cricket,” he said. “I think we dominated the first two days, they came back really well the next two days.
“This is what Tests are all about. Once you get someone out cheap in the first innings you can’t just think you have won a Test.
“This is where teams fight back and they really fought back well. This Test ended up even but both teams played really well.”
Clearly Misbah is a student of recent history and knew all along the likelihood of this stalemate.
Eight of the last 12 Test matches between the two, from the beginning of 2009, have ended in draws, subverting the modern Test trend of fewer draws; Sri Lanka have won three and Pakistan only one.
That, though if Misbah keeps note of these things, came in Dubai, where the sides head to now for the second of the three-match Test series, starting Wednesday.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
