Australia’s quicks blow Pakistan away

Pakistan 8 for 97 (Sarfraz 31*, Hazlewood 3-19, Starc 3-45, Wood 2-7) trail Australia 429 (Smith 130, Handscomb 105, Renshaw 71, Wahab 4-89, Amir 4-97) by 332 runsScorecard and ball-by-ball details

Australia and Pakistan on night two in Brisbane resembled nothing so much as Australia and most of the rest of the world during the great recession of 2008. Having planned and saved soundly in the good times on a slower day one pitch, the hosts were able to absorb the shock of tougher batting conditions, helped by a Peter Handscomb stimulus package.

Pakistan had no such safety net, and when the crash came under the Gabba lights against the wobbling pink ball, they went swiftly into free fall. The visiting batsmen jutted their bats out at the bad real estate offered by Australia’s canny bowlers like so many reckless traders, and were left observing the ruins of their first innings like former employees of Lehman Brothers.

The main reason for the day’s violent swerve from 1 for 43 to 8 for 67 was the quickening of the surface, which clearly did not need a single millimetre more grass than the two the curator Kevin Mitchell Jnr. left on it. One wonders how swiftly the match might have moved with the 6mm preferred by Adelaide’s groundsman Damian Hough.

Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Jackson Bird had far too much speed, accuracy and movement for Pakistan’s batsmen, cowed as they already had been on slower, seamier pitches in New Zealand. Of the tourists only Sami Aslam gave any indication of permanence, and even that was of the painful, white-knuckle kind as he wore two blows on the helmet …

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