ADELAIDE: Yasir Shah has scored his maiden Test century with 12 remarkable boundaries in the second Test match against Australia at Adelaide Oval.
Babar Azam once again reinforced his standing as Pakistan s talisman with 97 runs and 11 marvelous boundaries this time, but couldn’t complete his century on Day 3. The troubled team Pakistan were trailing by 320 runs against Australia.
Pakistan made 269 for eight wickets in the continuing session 2.
Azam displayed his maximum batsman capabilities for recovering Pakistan out of massive trail set by Australia, but was caught by Aussie skipper Tim Paine in the over of Mitchell Starc.
Yesterday, an irrepressible David Warner smashed an unbeaten 335 on Saturday while Steve Smith became the fastest man to 7,000 Test runs as Australia took control of the day-night second Test against Pakistan.
Skipper Tim Paine waved his players back into the pavilion at 589 for three ahead of the second day s dinner break with Warner on the 10th highest Test score ever, also a personal best.
The decision to declare deprived him of a crack at Brian Lara s all-time high 400 not out, but it proved to be the right one with the Australian bowlers quickly tearing through Pakistan s hapless top order under the Adelaide Oval lights.
Pakistan finished in deep trouble at 96 for six with Mitchell Starc grabbing four of them.
“It s just sunk in to me that it is very rare that you get these opportunities… I ll cherish this moment for the rest of my life, definitely,” said Warner on making such a big score.
“More importantly, the partnerships we put on. It just showed how much pride we have as a batting unit running between the wickets.
“If I m doing my job well and putting the team in the best position, we re going to win a lot of games,” he added.
The visitors, who have lost 13 consecutive Tests in Australia, enjoyed little success in a long day in the field as they look to avoid a 2-0 series defeat.
But they did remove Marnus Labuschagne for 162 in the opening session and also bagged Smith, caught behind by Mohammad Rizwan off Shaheen Afridi for 36.
In making his runs, Smith shattered a record that had stood since 1946.
He took a single off Muhammad Musa to reach 7,000 runs in his 126th innings, taking possession of a mark held for 73 years by English great Wally Hammond who reached the milestone in his 131st innings.
Smith also moved past legendary countryman Donald Bradman s 6,996 Test runs to become Australia s 11th highest scorer.
