Australia have raged forward in the first innings and are on course to set up a big total on Day 2 of the second Test match at Karachi on Sunday, 13 March. Scoring at a steady rate, Australia were 293/3 after 100 overs with centurion Usman Khawaja and nightwatchman Nathan Lyon on the pitch.
Day 1 was headlined by Khawaja’s history-making innings, where the Pakistan-born scored his first Test century in his country of birth. Besides Khawaja, Steve Smith looked threatening on the day and fell after scoring 72 runs off 214 balls on another batting pitch. Pakistan barely looked threatening on Day 1 and had to resort to negative tactics to check the runflow. They bowled leg stump lines and tried to get Smith out like they did in the last match, but it did not pan out.
A little reprieve arrived late in the final session of the game when Smith poked Hasan Ali outside off stump and pacer Faheem Ashraf flung himself to his left to grab the ball out of thin air.
Barring those two, David Warner had a good start after negotiating the first 5 overs of swing from Shaheen Shah Afridi and went on to make 36 off 48 balls. He was troubled on both edges of his bat in the first few overs, struggling to judge balls bowled to him from around the wicket by the right handers. He ended up poking a ball back to the keeper in the corridor of uncertainty and became the first wicket to fall on Day 1.
But the day was all about the grit of Khawaja who scored 97 runs in the first Test match before getting out. This time around, things got really tentative in the 90s for the left hander but he managed to place spinner Sajid Khan for a single through the off side to complete his century.
Khawaja has been in exceptional form since making a comeback into Test cricket and has scored three centuries already since his return in the Ashes.
The second day looks like another long one with the pitch offering little to no help for the bowlers. Australia will look to pile on runs and play throughout Day 2 and hope that the pitch breaks when they come out to bowl. Australia are playing two spinners in Nathan Lyon and Mitchell Swepson, hoping that the wicket will support spin in the last three days.