Nathan Ellis shines as Australia beat Pakistan
Fast bowler Nathan Ellis grabbed a career-best 4-33 on yet another tricky wicket and led Australia to series-leveling 41-run win over Pakistan in the second one-day international.
Pakistan, which won the first game by five wickets on a turning wicket, was bowled out for 190 after Australia had scored 231-9 on a pitch that had plenty of turn for the spinners and variable bounce for the seam bowlers.
“It’s definitely different to the traditional one-day cricket we see around the world at the moment,” Ellis said in reference to Pakistan’s ploy to make rank-turners for the series against an understrength Australia.
“It’s no secret that today it was pretty low and slow … we saw the cutters and the slow balls working a lot today, and the ball started to tail and reverse swing through the 35-to-45-over mark.”
Half-centuries from captain Josh Inglis (51) and Cameron Green (53) were supported by Matthew Renshaw’s run-a-ball 43, while 19-year-old Oliver Peake added 31 off 32 balls after Pakistan captain Shaheen Shah Afridi won the toss and elected to field.
Left-arm spinner Arafat Minhas, who became the first Pakistani bowler to take five wickets in his debut ODI at Rawalpindi last Saturday, returned figures of 2-27.
Leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed had 2-34 while the pace duo of captain Afridi (3-36) and Haris Rauf (2-49) shared five wickets between them.
All-rounder Shadab Khan scored 71 off 104 balls to make amends for his wicketless return of 0-56 and took the Pakistan chase deep before he was the last man dismissed — stumped down the legside by Inglis off leg-spinner Tanveer Sangha.
Ellis struck in his first over when Maaz Sadaqat played the ball back onto his stumps, and then the fast bowler had Babar Azam (16) lbw off a delivery that nipped sharply into Pakistan’s premier batter in the fifth over.
Pakistan’s middle-order struggled to cope with the spin of Matthew Short (3-36) and slumped to 78-6 before Shadab and Arafat Minhas (33) revived the chase with a 59-run partnership.
But Ellis broke the stand when he had Minhas trapped lbw in the 32nd over. Shadab got to his fifth half-century in ODIs and struck two sixes against Green.
The series concludes Thursday at the same venue.
“It was a pretty good total in the end,” Inglis said. “It would have been nice for someone to go on and get a big score, but …. we thought anything over 200, we were right in the game.
“You can always call on Nello (Ellis) on those sort of pitches, his variations are outstanding, and when you’ve got on-pace at 145 and then your slow balls at just over 100k an hour, it’s really tough.”
Australia batters show plenty of patienceThe slowness of the wicket was evident after Alex Carey had dragged Afridi’s first ball of the match back onto his stumps and the Pakistan skipper didn’t hesitate to introduce his two best spinners - Minhas and Abrar - from both ends inside the power play.
Abrar had an early success when he found the leading edge of Short’s bat for a comfortable return catch and Marnus Labuschagne once again failed to bat on turning tracks when he top-edged a sweep against Minhas and fell for 5.
Inglis and Green then shut out expansive shots and shared a 51-run stand off 93 balls. Inglis raised his half-century with a reverse swept boundary against Abrar before he was undone by low bounce and was clean bowled by Minhas.
Green continued to grind out against spinners and together with Renshaw raised a 65-run stand before Green finally ran out of patience soon after scoring his half-century and holed out to long-on to give Abrar his second wicket.
Rauf then rattled Renshaw’s stumps with a full-pitched delivery from round the wicket in the 44th over, but Peake ensured Australia had enough runs on board by smashing two sixes and a boundary before he was bowled in the final over.
“We gave away 20-30 extra runs towards the end,” Afridi said. “We lost wickets early on and that built pressure on us — it is a spinning track, not easy to bat on, but the way Nathan Ellis bowled — stump to stump — that brought him success.”
