Pakistan need more than a moral victory

Match facts

December 26-30, 2016 Start time 1030 local (2330 GMT)

Big Picture

For those who had gotten used to the shock of the new provided by consecutive day-night Tests, the arrival of Boxing Day would hark back to something far more traditional: a morning start, a red ball, a heaving crowd at the MCG and the festive atmosphere of one of cricket’s great set-piece occasions. Which of the teams would best rise to it, though?

Australia’s players got the fright of their lives when a Gabba Test they had dominated seemed to be slipping away from them, momentarily, via the cultured hands of Asad Shafiq and the Pakistan tail. Mitchell Starc struck in the nick of time to secure the victory, but the physical toll it took on him, Josh Hazlewood and others was clear. In deciding to ignore the allrounder Hilton Cartwright, Australia’s selectors have presented the hosts with the chance to seal the series with an unchanged team. Doing so would finish a year of some tribulation with greater optimism than had seemed likely when South Africa were humiliating a rather different-looking team in Hobart. But, the four-bowler combination that Pakistan seemed to get used to by the end of the Gabba Test faced plenty of hard graft before that scenario could unfold.

Pakistan, of course, were widely regarded as the moral victors of a match they seemed certain to lose by a vast margin. Clearly, they finished it far better than they started and enter into the second Test with a lot more confidence than they did the first. One thing that has to change, however, was the balance of the bowling attack and the way in which it was utilised. Australia lost only 15 wickets in Brisbane, and much of the time Misbah-ul-Haq seemed preoccupied with containment rather than wicket-taking. At the MCG, a ground that …

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