Five in day does Jamieson nicely
Kiwi seamer’s height, swing give Pakistan tough time but Azhar Ali shows batting class
Nearly 300 runs, a side dismissed and a five-wicket bag — if Pakistan’s No 3 had clawed out just seven more runs it would have been close to the perfect day’s test cricket.
As it was, it was pretty darn compelling. Kyle Jamieson’s rockstar start to test cricket continued unabated as the tall seamer just edged Azhar Ali (93) to take the nonexistent man-of-the-first-day honours.
“It was a different challenge as to what it was a week ago,” he said of the conditions that both helped fast bowling but also promoted quick scoring.
“Things happened a little quicker in terms of the ball moving around but it also provided scoring chances for them. They put us under pressure at times but luckily we could wrap it up at the end of the day.”
Azhar and Jamieson, along with Mohammad Rizwan, engaged in an epic battle in the middle session.
“Kyle is quite tall and bowling good lines and lengths and swinging it both ways. It was fun, also it was tough as well,” Azhar said. “We were talking, because of his height we need to consider that but when it’s there to hit we’ll take our boundaries.
“It was a tough spell to negotiate and at the end Rizwan got out. On another day he could have got through that because he was hitting the ball nicely.”
Jamieson admitted to a bit of exasperation as Pakistan’s two best players mixed caution with aggression and a share of luck too.
“It was frustrating, yeah. The difference between Bay Oval and here is our natural length at Bay Oval was back [shorter] a bit so your natural variation towards something fuller and wider means they don’t score as quickly.
“At grounds like this where your length needs to be fuller it does provide scoring opportunities.
“It felt like we were beating the bat a lot and they were also scoring freely so that’s a tough one to get your head around,” Jamieson said.
“That’s two of their best batsmen and it was a pivotal time to pull it back and put one of them back in the sheds.”
Jamieson described 297 as a par score, though Azhar felt it was slightly better than that given how green the pitch appeared early.
“We knew the first couple of hours would be tough. If you see that much grass on the pitch you’re going to have to focus for a long time,” Azhar said.
“It’s a good enough pitch to score runs on but in between that you need to focus and you need to leave on the length, which was the key in my batting.”