DUBAI // Finally, the opposition have turned up. A month after Pakistan swapped green clothes and crises for whites and serenity, they have run into a contest.
It is about time, too. For all the gloriousness of the rise of Pakistan’s lovable everymen, we have had enough of one-sidedness.
Monopolies are rarely healthy, and Test cricket could do with New Zealand making a fight of this series.
They did exactly that on Day 1 at the Dubai International Stadium. Propped up by a fine century by Tom Latham, the 22-year-old opener, the tourists showed the sort of backbone which had been so curiously absent amongst Antipodean batsmen of late.
Aside from one moment of rashness from their captain, Brendon McCullum, they were watchful, patient and generally competent.
And, perhaps more pertinently, they learned how to call a coin toss correctly.
McCullum had said on the eve of this game that winning the toss did not equal winning the match, but acknowledged it might shorten the odds.
When he called “heads” correctly half an hour before the start, his countenance visibly lifted. No doubt his fellow players were happy to have first use of a pristine, dry wicket, too.
“Even though you have won the toss, it doesn’t guarantee you anything,” Craig McMillan, the New Zealand batting coach, said after the close.
“What it does means is that you have a good day and you play well, it can put you ahead in the game.
“We have laid a platform, but there is still a lot of hard work to do.”
Peculiarly, having lost the previous match by 248 runs, the New Zealanders had opted to stick with the same XI, while their conquerors made three changes.
Two were enforced. Both the openers Ahmed Shazhad and Mohammed Hafeez – who contributed 373 runs between them in Abu Dhabi – succumbed to injury, replaced by Shan Masood and Taufeeq Umar.
Hafeez has already been conspicuous by his absence. With two leg-spinners and a left-arm orthodox bowler left, Pakistan had nobody to spin the ball away from the left-handed Latham.
The hosts generally looked a bowler short all day, and it was perhaps no surprise that newcomer Ehsan Adil, the seamer who was preferred to Imran Khan, posed the biggest threat.
With five Tests being played over the course of 41 days, the workload for Pakistan’s bowling attack is hefty.
Adil, fresh from just a few low-key games with Pakistan A, took the wicket of McCullum, burned both DRS appeals with close lbw shouts, and also had Latham dropped by Azhar Ali in the gully on 103.
Three wickets may be a meagre return in comparison to their recent gluttony, but Pakistan are not panicking yet.
“[New Zealand] haven’t really gotten away with the game yet,” said Masood, who took a sharp catch at silly mid-off to dismiss Ross Taylor off Yasir Shah’s bowling.
“They only managed to score about 80 runs per session, so we have kept it tight. Hopefully if we can get a few wickets in the morning we might have an edge in this game.”
pradley@thenational.ae
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