Updated ,first published
This was supposed to be a banner day for Ollie Peake, surpassing Ricky Ponting as Australia’s youngest batting debutant in an ODI.
Instead, it became a pageant for a Pakistani debutant, the wily left-arm spinner Arafat Minhas, who scooped 5-32 as the under-strength tourists were flummoxed on a Rawalpindi pitch that spun and kept low. No Pakistani had ever taken five-for on ODI debut before.
By the time Peake came to the middle at number seven, most of the damage had already been done: senior men Alex Carey, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne and Cameron Green all fell rapidly to effectively rule out any kind of big total for Australia.
It was the sort of batting disintegration Australia have seen multiple times in south Asia over the years. The absent Travis Head and Steve Smith may well have been able to stem the bleeding a little more effectively.
Matt Short and Matt Renshaw played soundly to retrieve the situation somewhat, but never got completely in control of things against spin bowlers who kept the scoring rate down, while producing the occasional moment of magic in helpful conditions.
“When you’re four down early it makes it really difficult to try and build a big score,” Renshaw said. “We built a couple of really good partnerships, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. I think maybe 250-260 would’ve been really interesting on that wicket.
“We come to the subcontinent as Australians, we know we’re going to get more wickets favouring spin. Subcontinent teams come to Australia, and we’re getting bouncy, fast ones, so it is what it is when we come over here. There are a few balls that went really low, that spun, but that’s just the way cricket is when you come to the subcontinent.
“But we did what we could with what we had and unfortunately, it wasn’t enough today.”
Peake’s first ball in international cricket came from Arafat, and the 19-year-old just managed to get his bat down before it snaked back towards pads and stumps.
There was one streaky boundary as Peake tried to form a partnership with Renshaw, before he leant back to cut a delivery that was perhaps slightly too full for the shot and edged behind to depart for seven.
With left-arm spinner Matt Kuhnemann batting at eight, the Australians had a decidedly long tail, so it should have been up to Carey, Inglis, Labuschagne and Green to do something more substantial.
Instead, they all departed in the space of 34 runs, the last three dematerialising inside six balls from 21-year-old Arafat, to leave the game at the mercy of Pakistan.
Changing his pace and varying the degree of turn expertly, Arafat beat Inglis on a reverse sweep, then zipped through Labuschagne’s ambitious back-foot forcing attempt. Green, who has unhappy memories of the pre-T20 World Cup trip to Pakistan earlier in the year, was utterly defeated by a delivery that turned sharply from outside leg stump to take the top of off.
From there, Australia’s best chance lay in a huge partnership between Short and Renshaw, but after reaching a serviceable 50, Short ventured out of his crease to the first ball of a new spell by Arafat and was stumped by metres.
Renshaw’s departure came to another ripping delivery, this time from Abrar Ahmed, which turned and kept low from around the wicket to clatter into off stump halfway up.
Defending a paltry total, the Australians needed early wickets. Kuhnemann and wrist spinner Tanveer Sangha, playing in place of Adam Zampa due to a neck spasm, coaxed skied catches in the deep to have Pakistan 2-49, but from there the hosts had some good fortune.
Babar Azam, allowed to play at the sort of tempo he prefers due to the low scoring nature of the run chase, was reprieved a couple of times. First he bunted a low catch to Short at short cover off Kuhnemann, only for third umpire Richard Kettleborough to rule against a clean catch.
On 39, Babar was pinned in front of the stumps by the recalled Billy Stanlake, but was given not out by Kumar Dharmasena and Australia’s review found the appeal denied on umpire’s call because this was a rare delivery bouncing enough to only be clipping the top of the stumps.
Babar had just reached 50 and the total was 136 when Short’s off-break bounced enough to cramp the striker into a miscue towards mid-off, where Kuhnemann put down the catch. That was Australia’s last chance.
From there, the stand between Babar (69) and Ghazi Gori (65) took Pakistan to within 25 runs of their target, which was ultimately achieved with more than seven overs to spare. Fittingly, it was Arafat who punched a six down the ground to close it out.
Daniel Brettig is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X.From our partners
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