Pakistan seek tempered approach on spicy track

Match facts

November 25-29, 2016 Start time 1100 local (2200 GMT)

Big Picture

While tawny Asian pitches can still prompt outrage and consternation, tracks coloured a lurid, nausea-inducing green have quietly become a New Zealand trademark. The response from most touring sides has been perfectly even-handed. “These are their home conditions,” is the consensus. “We just have to play on what we get.”

On the eve of the Test, Hamilton’s track looks as green as the pitch had been in Christchurch. As the air is warmer up north, the ball may swing more here, as well as seam. Word around the ground is that the toss may also prove significant; teams that have won it in the last five Tests have inserted the opposition, and have always wound up victorious.

It is the batting that will have given Pakistan most cause for concern in Christchurch and, as can often be the case with batsmen in unfamiliar conditions, they veered between extreme approaches – too loose in the first innings, too tight in the second. Now they are preaching the “get runs, before the good ball gets you” philosophy that has recently found credence on tough tracks. In the backs of their minds they will also want to take the game deep – it is legspinner Yasir Shah who has most consistently wrenched matches open for them, and it is the quality of his spin that marks the visitors’ clearest advantage over New Zealand.

The hosts are without Trent Boult for the first time in over three years, but have the firepower of Matt Henry sliding in to replace him. With a win behind them, and a damp surface underfoot again, banished is talk of the dusty whitewash in India, even if the batsmen haven’t all reclaimed their form just yet.

They remain wary of Pakistan’s propensity to work out …

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