- Commissioner’s statement on Ventura, Marte
- Ronnie O’Sullivan: Masters champion ‘felt so vulnerable’ in final
- Arron Fletcher Wins 2017 WSOP International Circuit Marrakech Main Event ($140,224)
- Smith challenges Warner to go big in India
- Moncada No. 1 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- Braves land 2 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- Kingery makes MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- New Zealand wrap up 2-0 after Bangladesh implosion
- Mathews, Pradeep, Gunathilaka to return to Sri Lanka
- Elliott hopes for rain for Poli
Pakistan unfazed by Misbah’s dip in form
- Updated: December 22, 2016
Seven years is a long time as it is, but for Misbah-ul-Haq, it probably feels like a lifetime. Seven years ago he came into the Boxing Day Test at the end of a year in which his second coming was grinding to a halt.
He had scored just 261 runs in 11 innings until then and actually been dropped from all of Pakistan’s squads. A day after the exclusion he went back to domestic cricket and made 284, ensuring a swift return for the tours to New Zealand and Australia at the behest of Mohammad Yousuf, who had taken over from Younis Khan.
The response was a pleasant and fluent 65 in the first innings, but even then it felt not like an old man raging against the dying light or going gently into it, but just one coming sensibly to terms with a difficult situation. He was out first ball in the second innings, in the first over of the fifth day, then for a two-ball duck in the Sydney chase and dropped. All over, everyone thought, except that it hadn’t even begun.
He returns this year short on runs again. Talk of an exit is on the agenda, but some way down and not nearly as vexing as it was in 2009. He was one of the few specialist batsmen who didn’t get runs in Brisbane, though the nature of the innings and dismissals are worth noting more than the scores of 4 and 5.
Both times he looked skittish at the crease and was …
