Abu Dhabi: Imran Khan credited his success to the time he spent in domestic cricket honing his bowling skills. Khan was instrumental in creating havoc with his reverse swing bowling, which resulted in the wickets of skipper Michael Clarke and Mitchell Marsh, who was the top scorer of the day for Australia with 87 on day 3.
“I had worked really hard on my bowling in the domestic circuit. Being with Waqar Younis really helped me. I was able to get the ball to reverse swing in Pakistan and thankfully, by the grace of God, managed to do that here,” said Khan, whose most cherished wicket was of Clarke, when he sent the middle stumps cart wheeling with a sensational delivery that came in sharply after pitching outside off.
“We noticed the mistakes he was making and accordingly, I made the changes. Thankfully, I managed to get it spot on and got the ball to reverse swing. I have been getting lot of wickets in the last two to three years with my reverse swing bowling,” added Khan, who finished with figures of 3 for 60.
Pakistan’s batting coach Grant Flower justified skipper Misbah ul-Haq and team management’s decision not to enforce a follow-on, saying, “I think some of our bowlers were a bit tired and their innings dragged on a bit. I think we wanted our bowlers to comeback and have a bit of a breather.”
Flower refused to accept that it was a negative approach on the part of his team not to make Australia follow-on. “I don’t think so. I think there is lot of cricket to be played. I think we are now getting to a stage where there is only one winner; especially after being one-up in the series. I think if we can play them out of the game and set a target they can’t chase then the job is done,” said Flower, who felt that Pakistan would certainly like to bat until the afternoon session on day 4 before declaring. “I think if we bat until afternoon tomorrow then we will have enough runs on board to bowl them out.”
Australia’s Mitchell Marsh, who top scored with 87, said that his team wasn’t surprised with Pakistan’s decision not to enforce a follow-on despite having a lead of 309 runs.
“I don’t think we were surprised. I certainly wasn’t. We’ve got a huge challenge ahead of us. Whatever total they set us will be a huge one and we’ll fight as hard as we can to hang on to this Test match. If we get some early wickets you never know,” said Marsh, who expressed his disappointment in not carrying on to score a hundred. “It was obviously very disappointing to get out the way I did. I didn’t really think about it [century] at all when I was batting. But that is cricket.”
