West Indies hardly got us out - Mushfiqur

Side gate that sealed the victory in the West Indies, Bangladesh, against the West Indies, 2nd Test, Mirpur, 5 days, 2 November 2011

Mushfiqur Rahim: "There are times we do not know what to do, go slow or speed up the pace.

Mushfiqur Rahim, the Bangladesh captain, said that his team had the talent of some irresponsible Mirpur Test defeat on the last day. Bangladesh, he said, is to work in their temperament. West Indies finished 229-run win to take the test and the series on Wednesday, while Bangladesh is successful Bat Out fifth day is relatively easy to follow.

"They [West Indies] has just out, we shared the wickets," said Mushfiqur. "[Shivnarine] Chanderpaul said after the game, that" whenever we think of you came out. Do not do it [BAT recklessly] in the future. "

Coming on the fifth day, Bangladesh needed 344 points to win, and Tamim Iqbal was beat is 82 plan, Mushfiqur said, was to not lose more than two sessions wickets. "Our gameplan was to bat session of the meeting. To win would be great, but the draw was not so bad. It would have been difficult to bowl us if we had lost more than two wickets session."

But Bangladesh lost Tamim in the third over of the day, and Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur in quick succession before lunch. "After Tamim, sadly gone, and I beat Chakib until about 25 minutes for lunch. There were 12 overs left before the new ball and I thought that if we had played until noon and negotiated over the next ten overs, they would not be able to do something for us. "

Tamim edged to slip while trying to run Devendra Bishoo - who turn many of the rough, the only help bowlers proposed pitch - while Shakib is attempted paddle sweeps Darren Sammy has produced a top edge which was snaffled by Chanderpaul . Shakib is the error, Mushfiqur said, the game swung in favor of the West Indies.

"He [wicket Chakib] was the turning point," said Mushfiqur. "He did not play a good shot, he knows it too. I have not seen a picture like that of Test cricket.'s Batting a ball game, a miscalculation and you're out. Chakib know what it is today and I hope not do it again. "

The team, Mushfiqur said, need to work on the art of building a test input. "We do not play with long sleeves in the tests, the lack of time. You have to play with long sleeves, if they win or draw a test match. We have to work on this issue, make it a habit of playing long sleeves.

"There are times when we do not know what to do, to go slow or speed. Our thoughts should be to make a big knock after we have set ourselves. We lose concentration when a wicket falls at the other end. Batting is choosing the right ball, and I think we really need to work with these things. "

Bowlers lead SBP to big win

It took State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) a little over 20 overs on the final day to wrap up an innings and 46-run win over Faisalabad at the Sports Stadium in Sargodha. The only resistance came from Faisalabad's overnight pair, Asif Hussain and Zeeshan Butt. Resuming on 116 for 3, the pair took their stand beyond the hundred-run mark, before being separated with the score on 141. The final six wickets then fell for just 16 runs. The bowlers shared the wickets around, but legspinner Kashif Siddiq was the best of them, claiming 4 for 22.


The game between Karachi Blues and Habib Bank Limited (HBL) at the National Stadium in Karachi was called off without the third innings being completed. HBL went from 80 for no loss to 210 for 4 on the final day, a lead of 192 runs over Karachi, at which point the game was halted. Both openers, Shan Masood and Ahmed Shehzad, went on to complete half-centuries and put on their second century partnership of the game. Shehzad was subsequently banned for one game for dissent.


Sialkot managed to hold on for a draw against National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) at the Jinnah Stadium in Sialkot. They began the final day on 29 for no loss, following on and trailing by 138 runs. But a strong showing from their top order made sure they secured the match. Five of the top six got into double figures, with Mansoor Amjad top scoring with 99. Amjad was on course for his seventh first-class hundred, but was run out going for his 100th run.

Waqar Ahmed's seven takes Peshawar to top

Peshawar beat Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) by 42 runs at the Arbab Niaz Stadium in Peshawar, powered by a seven-wicket haul by Waqar Ahmed. Waqar Ahmed had claimed two wickets on the fourth day, and took another five on Wednesday to finish with 11 in the game. Ali Waqas, Khurram Shehzad and Imran Khalid all scored half-centuries, but none of them could bat out the overs needed to secure a draw. This is Peshawar's fifth win in five games, which puts them at the top of the points table.

Karachi Whites registered an easy nine-wicket win against Hyderabad at the Niaz Stadium in Sind. Hyderabad had resumed 36 runs ahead, with one wicket in hand in the follow-on. The last pair added 19 runs on the final morning to set Karachi Whites 56 for a win. Opener Fazal Subhan was run out cheaply in the chase, but Zeeshan Jamil teed off from the other end. Jamil smacked 41 not out off 30 balls with six fours and two sixes to mow down the paltry target in 8.1 overs.

United Bank Limited (UBL) claimed the eight wickets that they needed and sealed their match against Lahore Shalimar at the Lahore City Cricket Association Ground by 146 runs. The hosts began the final day on 81 for 2 in pursuit of 385 and, as none of their batsmen could build a long innings, folded for 238. Opener Mohammad Hamza and Asif Raza showed slight resistance with knocks of 60 and 46 respectively, but it was not enough to save the game for Lahore Shalimar. Fast bowler Mohammad Irshad finished with the best figures for UBL: 4 for 67.

Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) beat Multan by an innings and 61 runs inside three days at the Multan Cricket Stadium. Multan, following-on, collapsed from 77 for 3 to 114 all out. They were not helped by the fact that their captain Naved Yasin was injured and so could not bat in either of their innings. Only Moinuddin managed to hit a half-century for Multan, scoring 53 before he was picked up by new-ball bowler Rahat Ali. Rahat was the wrecker-in-chief, claiming four top and middle order wickets to take his match haul to seven.

We counted on MacGill to play on - Nielsen

Stuart MacGill is borne aloft as he exits the Test arena for the last time, West Indies v Australia, 2nd Test, Antigua, June 3, 2008

'MacGill isn't talked about much but he took 200 Test wickets. By then he was probably older than he needed to be to play every Test match for a couple of years'


Stuart MacGill threw Australian cricket's plan for life after Shane Warne into a state of confusion when he retired almost two years earlier than expected, the former national coach Tim Nielsen has said.

Nielsen revealed in an interview with ESPNcricinfo that the team expected MacGill to play on until the end of 2009, rather than ending his career in the middle of the 2008 West Indies tour.

Such a path would have had MacGill face India, New Zealand, South Africa and then England on the 2009 Ashes tour. Instead, his retirement started a cycle of scatter-shot spin bowling selections that continued unabated for three years, and may only be settling now after Nathan Lyon's success on his first Test tour in Sri Lanka.

Nielsen admitted he was unsure whether in all that time the team and the selectors knew exactly what they were looking for in a spinner.

"I just wonder whether we ever clearly understood what role we wanted the spinner to actually play," Nielsen said. "We came off the Warne era and the MacGill era, MacGill retired in the West Indies in '08 which was why Beau [Casson] came in to debut.

"What really was the issue was we counted on MacGill to play through until the end of 2009 really, and when that changed, it put us under a bit of pressure from a spin bowling stocks point of view, we had young blokes who weren't quite ready and maybe thrown in the deep end a bit early. At different times there were decisions made that it might actually hurt them more to keep going rather than just yank them out and let them play a bit more Shield cricket."

Having spent most of his career in the shadow of Warne, MacGill became Australia's No. 1 spinner at the end of 2007 but immediately ran into a range of physical problems, from chronic knee trouble to the damaging emergence of carpal-tunnel syndrome, which robbed him of feeling in his spinning fingers.

"MacGill isn't talked about much but he took 200 Test wickets. By then he was probably older than he needed to be to play every Test match for a couple of years," Nielsen said. "He'd played a lot of Test cricket by the time he got the opportunity to be the only spinner, he must've played 50 Test matches, and he had chronic knees, he'd been around the system for a long time.

"What we did do after that was speculate a couple of times, that didn't quite work out, [Nathan] Hauritz has been pretty good I reckon. Because we've had a few spinners in a row it continues to be talked about, and in the background under all that you say is SK Warne. Someone we relied on and loved to have for so long, was no longer there.

"It was a hard place to be as a spinner because there was this public expectation of the next Warne and our Test match victories a lot of the time happened with the quicks doing damage in the first part of the game and then Warney cleaning up in the second half. When we didn't have that sort of option there was pressure put on publicly and I'm sure they felt it themselves, so it wasn't that easy."

Among the most curious cases in Australia's spin saga was that of Jason Krejza, dropped only one Test after taking 12 wickets on his debut in India as an aggressive bowler. Nielsen said that looking back, Krejza might easily have been persisted with, though he also highlighted the problem of bowlers learning their trade at Test level because they were not given enough room by their states in first-class cricket.

"In hindsight it is easy to say exactly that, we should have stuck with him," Nielsen said. "The hard part was he was very inexperienced, a bit like us having to pick Hauritz out of the NSW second XI. Everybody yells and screams about the selectors having to pick spinners, well I'd like the states to start picking some spinners as well and sticking with them.

"While the selectors can be panned for that, it is bloody hard to go up and learn your caper at the highest level. We need to get these kids in there and give them a run and a chance to get their heads around first-class cricket, and learn. Ideally by the time they get to Test match cricket they've been up and down and through the mill a couple of times, and understand how to cope when its not spinning a lot in Perth or its not going that well in Brisbane. They've learned by playing there.

If you play all forms of cricket, you may end up being mediocre'

Fast bowlers are on the verge of becoming an endangered species. They suffer many, and frequently recurring, injuries these days, owing in part to the volume of cricket being played. And fewer seem to come up through the ranks than before. ESPNcricinfo picked the brains of five of the finest of the species at a fast bowling conference organised by the Lord's Taverner's in London in September, to find out why the art of pace is on the decline.

Junaid Khan signals the dismissal of Tillakaratne Dilshan, Pakistan v Sri Lanka, 2nd Test, Dubai, 1st day, October 26, 2011
Andy Roberts: "Pakistan have fast pitches? People are complaining about the lack of fast pitches, yet Pakistan have a number of great fast bowlers"


Have relentless scheduling, placid pitches, and playing in three different formats without many breaks had an impact on the modern-day fast bowler?

Glenn McGrath Yes and no. To be a great bowler, to be successful, you have to be able to perform day in and day out, in different conditions all round the world, and then you can probably say to yourself, "I've done a pretty decent job."

I'm not sure what the exact problem is with modern-day fast bowlers: even in Australia a lot of quicks are getting injured. In 1995 I came back from West Indies and I had lost a lot of weight. I had torn my intercostal muscle, and I thought if I wanted to be successful at Test cricket and play a long time, I'd have to do something differently. So I found a guy and trained with him and worked as hard as I could to get physically strong, and that helped me stay in good shape. So whether scheduling these days is not allowing that recovery or time off to build your strength back, to get fit and get strong again… maybe that has a little bit to do with it.

Would I decide to play one form of the game to prolong my career? Some guys do that. I never wanted to. Test cricket and one-day cricket were two different formats of the game, with different challenges. You had to go with different plans, and I actually enjoyed that. Throw Twenty20 into the mix and again you need a different gameplan and a different way to go about it. So I would play in all three formats of the game.

Curtly Ambrose The workload is a bit too much, to be quite honest. I mean, guys are going from one tour to the next without having any time to recover. Your body needs time to recuperate. So some of the guys get injuries so often.

Richard Hadlee It is all about the bowling loading. If you condition yourself to playing three different formats, you train differently. And if you are alternating between different forms, you might not be right for one form or the other. In one-day cricket you tend to bowl more wide of the crease and angle the ball in to crack the batsman up. In Test cricket you want to get closer to the stumps, running the ball away, where you have the field set to catch. Now in Twenty20 you bowl similar to one-day cricket - wider, directly into the batsman to cramp him; the field is set differently.

It creates different stresses and strains on the body in trying to bowl differently. You cannot avoid that. You have to make a decision about what form of the game you want to really play. If you want to play all forms of the game, you find that you do not become effective in any, and that creates mediocrity.

Andy Roberts I do not think it is scheduling. I do not think the reason is the pitches. Pakistan have fast pitches? People are complaining about the lack of fast pitches, yet Pakistan have a number of great fast bowlers. It has nothing to do with a pitch, because the ball does not gather pace once it hits the pitch. You are fast because you are fast through the air. If you are saying you do not get response from the pitch, that is different. But do not say you do not have fast bowlers because there are no fast pitches.

How many great fast bowlers did you have in the history of cricket up to 1990? How many of those fast bowlers had back injuries? These modern-day fast bowlers do not bowl half the overs I bowled. In my first season in county cricket I bowled 800 overs between April and August. Then I went to India and bowled 200 more overs.

We used to have boots made to specifications. The boots today's fast bowlers wear are light, and that could also be a problem.

Clive Rice It is not about the workload. Just before I started playing, guys in England bowled 1600 overs in a county season. Guys today have it easy. The more you bowl, the better you become. Even when we were playing, there was a theory that we were playing too much. Playing in England, if you were not available to play all the time, with all the rain, you would not have played. If you had a sunny period then you bowled a lot of overs. You were tired, but you could only be pleasantly weary and you got on with it. And you learned. When you were bowling at Viv Richards or at Sunil Gavaskar, you told yourself not to bowl in the wrong spots, because otherwise you would disappear.

I am not sure why they are getting injured. Maybe they have moved on to playing on indoor pitches [in training], which have concrete bases that mess up your back. If there is a soil base, there is a bit more give.

It is up to the bowler to make sure he stays fit. A fast bowler, to me, is like a sprinter in athletics. You have got to be able to sprint, not just jog in to bowl. Then you can stand up to it. You see the guys with long run-ups, but you are not running 5000 metres. You have got to run in with a purpose.

Is speed overrated?



"Anyone who is a fast bowler wants to bowl as fast as he can and bowl the magic 100mph delivery. But at the end of the day you have to have control, bowling at a good pace" Glenn McGrath



Hadlee Speed isn't everything. But if you have natural speed with a good technique, it is a good asset to have. A lot of youngsters are either too full or too short. But once they start hitting that magical length, beating a batsman off a length, where the batsman is not sure whether to go forward or back and is crease-bound, that is when the fast bowler is going to be effective. It does not matter if he is then moving the ball in the air or off the track. You are creating three ways to get the batsman out: caught behind, lbw and bowled. If you are too full or too short, you are only giving yourself one chance.

McGrath My hero was Dennis Lillee. You look at the Windies teams of the 1970s and '80s - they were incredible, with all their fast bowlers running in, bowling like the wind. Anyone who is a fast bowler wants to bowl as fast as he can and bowl the magic 100mph delivery. But at the end of the day you still have to be consistent. You have to have control [while] bowling at a good pace. I tried to bowl as fast I could, but I had reasonable control, so that helped me.

Rice Everyone likes to bowl 90mph. And if you do bowl that sort of speed, the guys batting are under a great deal of pressure because of the speed at which it is coming. It is like driving a Formula 1 car to driving a salon car - there is a huge difference. So the bowler should find out how quick he actually he is, and then when he finds what this top pace is, he should settle down. Vary your pace by bowling 90% and 100%.

Are fast bowlers over-coached?

Ambrose Back in my time I was never really coached, per se. I learned my craft as I went along. And because I am a very, very proud person I wanted to be the best at what I do. I wanted my team to be the best. So I was forced to learn and learn quickly. But I believe guys should be coached, because when you are in the middle you [the bowler] do not see everything. When you are playing, you focus on some things, but you do not readily see the mistakes. That is where the coach comes in. The coach can point out the mistakes that you make and tries to correct them.

But we tend to rely too much on technology when coaching. I am not saying you cannot use it, but sometimes technology is overused. Whatever you put in the computer is what it gives out. The best form of coaching is in the nets. You can go on a computer and map out strategies about getting batsmen out, and everything looks perfect. But when you go in the middle, it is a different ball game altogether. What happens if the batsman decides to change his way of batting?

McGrath When I was young I did not have any coaching or did not model myself on anyone else. The first time I had coaching was when I was 22 - with Dennis Lillee - and that was more about refining my action. Sometimes these days young bowlers can be over-coached. They could be over-bowled or even under-bowled. You have to let the guy find his own action - as long as it is not a mixed action which is going to cause stress fractures. If he has got a good basis to build the action on, then let him go and bowl as much as he wants to.

Hadlee We bowled and bowled and bowled. We ran. We did not use the gym as much as they do today. You have computers telling you what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong. Those tools are useful to have, but sometimes simplicity is the best way to go.

Roberts The teachers who turn into coaches, coming in with their scientific approach to fast bowling, are causing the decline of fast bowling. They are literally changing a fast bowler's action, from using the body to using shoulders. You cannot bowl fast for long with your shoulder. I am not against the biomechanics, but bowlers are being over-coached and the coaches are coaching the wrong way.

Rice We learned certainly from watching other guys bowl, and copied them. Today if a coach has got a particular idea he is trying to instill in a person, maybe that is over-coaching the guy, because that is not the nature of how he wants to bowl or how his body is letting him bowl. As a bowling coach you just need to give him advice in terms of improving his skills and getting the simple things done right. If you change the action and stuff like that, then there will be problems.

Has Twenty20 watered down the fast bowler?

Hadlee It is a very destructive game for all cricketers, honestly. They get into bad habits. What sort of rhythm can you get into by bowling four overs in two different spells when you have got only 12 minutes to bowl in a match? You cannot become efficient with restriction and limitation in the game like that.

Roberts If you have a good fast bowler, he would be more effective in Twenty20 cricket than anybody else. If you bowl a 95-100 mph delivery, it would be very, very difficult for anybody to slog you over long-on or long-off.

Dale Steyn exults after striking early in his spell, Deccan Chargers v Delhi Daredevils, IPL 2011, Hyderabad, May 5, 2011
Andy Roberts: "If you have a good fast bowler, he would be more effective in Twenty20 cricket than anybody else. If you bowl a 95-100 mph delivery it would be very difficult for anybody to slog you" © AFP
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Ambrose Twenty20 to me has a part to play in cricket because it is exciting and fans love excitement. But it is a game for batsmen, really. However, it should not affect the fast bowler because you are only bowling four overs maximum. As a matter of fact it could be a learning process for the bowler. Twenty20 can be a sort of stepping stone for a fast bowler to work out ways of containing the batsman when he is really going at you.

Has cricket generally made it harder for fast bowlers to succeed by protecting batsmen too much?

Ambrose There is nothing in it for the fast bowler. Modern-day cricket favours the batsman in every aspect. The pitches are mostly flat and not conducive to fast bowling. Then they have this one-bouncer-per-over rule.

McGrath I do not mind it too much. Hopefully the rules do not change too much. At the end of the day you have to be able to adjust. As a bowler you cannot just say, this is the way I bowl. If the rules change, you adjust accordingly.

I am very much a traditionalist. The way it is being played, I prefer to keep it that way. The modern-day cricketer is playing the same game we played 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago. There have been a few rule changes in this time, but I am fine.

Rice It has even become harder for fast bowlers bowling at tailenders, because now they bat with the helmet on and all the padding in the world. When we bowled at them I would say to the tailender, "Are you trying to prove you are a batsman? If you are I am going to hit you in the head.

A harsh lesson for Pakistan to learn

Predictably the conviction of Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif on cricket corruption charges is producing hurt, bitterness, resentment and embarrassment in Pakistan. Former cricketers have appeared on television saying it is all a matter of shame. Fans are angry Pakistani stars have been ensnared by the British legal and penal system.

These are natural emotions provoked by unprecedented events, but sometimes you have to chop off a gangrenous limb to save a life. Losing the limb is painful, even debilitating. Yet it must be done for survival. Pakistan's convicted spot-fixers represent the gangrene that had been eroding the fabric of Pakistan's game. It hardly seems a coincidence that, following their exit from the team, Pakistan's fortunes on the field have improved.

Just as the salvaged patient and his family need to be grateful to the surgeon who performs the amputation, Pakistan cricket and those who love it owe a debt of gratitude to the News of the World and its clever investigative team. Were it not for this now-defunct tabloid's brilliant sting, we would still be in denial.

Over the years, several other cricketing names have been implicated in the treacherous schemes of rigged cricket outcomes, but prior to today nothing had been proven in this manner. South Africa captain Hansie Cronje's being convicted resulted from a confession, not prosecution. By far the most important reason why Butt and Asif are now facing prison terms is the penetrating quality of the media exposé that brought them down. Pakistani fans who are upset that their compatriots have been specifically targeted should understand that ultimately Butt and Asif fell victim to the weight of the evidence against them, not to any kind of national or other form of discrimination.

Corruption is notoriously difficult to establish. At one level this means that whatever is proven in a court of law, like today, represents the tip of the iceberg. Judging from the copious amounts of hearsay and innuendo related to match-fixing and spot-fixing that cricket followers have experienced in recent years, it could be a very large iceberg indeed. They may be the only ones who have been caught, but it is likely Butt and Asif are not the only ones involved, and this is surely not the only instance.

A major benefit of this guilty verdict is its value as a deterrent for would-be fixers. Butt and Asif are crooks on a grand scale, and must be sentenced and stigmatised accordingly. Granted they are not murderers or violent criminals, but they heartlessly trampled the innocent expectations of a hopeful nation. That is a close second.

The fight against corruption in cricket is far from over. In fact - with due respect to the ICC's ACSU and other related efforts to date - it has quite possibly just begun. Implications of the verdict against Butt and Asif are multiple and far-reaching, starting with the paradigm shift that corruption in cricket is no longer just a conspiracy theory. Take a moment to let that sink in. We have cherished cricket as a gentleman's game and revered it as a metaphor for morality. It is neither. Yet berating cricket as a sport would be the equivalent of blaming the victim of a rape. The fault lies with corrupt players and the corrupt bookies who entice, seduce and mislead them.



It is fortunate that the dynamics of the situation have taken the matter out of Pakistan's hands. Pakistani Test cricketers are about to go to jail in a foreign country for something they did on the field of play. This is not something you can brush under the carpet



Significantly this verdict provides an opening into the demand side of spot-fixing's supply-demand equation. So far all the anti-corruption hoopla from cricket administrators has focused on the dishonest players who provide the spot-fixing services. The crooked gamblers and shady punters who have created such an overwhelming demand for these services have been left untouched. The ICC and its member cricket boards now have an ideal opportunity to expand investigative probes into this murky betting underworld. They will have at their disposal powerful global entities such as Interpol, as well as local law enforcement agencies in all the Test-playing nations. At the core of rigged cricket betting is an engine of organised crime. It must be searched out wherever it exists, and it must be killed. And safeguards must be put in place that provide the game with enduring protection from this evil. A good deal has already been done in this regard, but Butt's and Asif's guilt reveals that it has not been enough.

Pakistan cricket has proved itself to be resilient before, and in all likelihood will do so yet again. Since the forfeited Oval Test of 2006, this team has suffered doping scandals, petty administrators, a coach found inexplicably dead in his hotel room, terrorism against a visiting team, and - for the foreseeable future - inability to play at home. The team's upswing following last year's infamous Lord's Test, when the spot-fixing disgrace initially broke, suggests it has moved on.

This is a welcome sign, but it comes with a critical caveat: nothing is to be gained by moving on unless there are lessons learned. In a sense it is fortunate that the dynamics of the situation have taken the matter out of Pakistan's hands. Pakistani Test cricketers are about to go to jail in a foreign country for something they did on the field of play. This is not something you can brush under the carpet. It is a lesson that will be learned, even if forcibly. Circumstances leave little choice.

Apart from Butt and Asif, other Pakistan players have been named. None of them is currently in the team. Depending on the continuing fallout of this ongoing crisis, they could remain sitting out for a long time, perhaps forever. Pakistan cricket is lying with its underbelly bared in the blinding glare of spectator attention and media spotlight. Forget actual wrong-doing, this team cannot risk even the remote perception of wrong-doing. That, if nothing else, promises to keep tricky behaviour in check. That can only be good news for Pakistan cricket and its fans.

Mohammad Saad, bowlers lead Lahore Ravi to big win

Lahore Ravi completed a whopping innings and 185-run victory over Quetta within three days at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. Mohammad Saad went on to add over a 100 runs to his overnight score of 84 and steered the hosts to 487 for 9. He fell for 188, but by then Lahore Ravi had secured a 315-run first-innings lead. Emmad Ali and Asif Ashfaq then went on to destroy the Quetta top order, while Waqas Aslam polished off the tail. If it hadn't been for an unbeaten fifty from captain Taimur Khan, the margin of defeat would have been much worse for Quetta.

On the third day at the Niaz Stadium in Sind, Karachi Whites' bowlers set their team up for an easy, big win against Hyderabad. Hyderabad had resumed on 161 for 5 in reply to Karachi Whites' 371, and promptly collapsed in the morning session. They folded for 197 courtesy incisive spells from Tabish Khan and Ali Mudassar, Karachi Whites' new-ball pair. Akbar-ur-Rehman enforced the follow and another collapse ensued. In their second innings Hyderabad went from 43 for 0 to 111 for 8, before a half-century stand between Mir Ali and Zahid Mahmood prevented an innings' defeat. Spinner Faraz Khan was the pick of the bowlers this time round, claiming 4 for 68. Ali fell for 86 just prior to stumps, as Hyderabad finished 36 ahead with one wicket in hand.

United Bank Limited (UBL) set Lahore Shalimar an imposing target of 385, and then prised out two wickets late on day three to edge ahead at the Lahore City Cricket Association Ground. UBL's first-innings' lead of 112 was built on by their opener Mohammad Sami, who made 110 and they declared at 272 for 5. Lahore Shalimar's openers looked settled in - they had put on 62 - before a double-strike from left-arm spinner Kashif Bhatti left them wobbling at stumps.

Akbar Badshah and Jamaluddin put on a century partnership to steer Peshawar into a position of dominance against Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) at the Arbab Niaz Stadium in Peshawar. The pair's stand was the backbone of the host's second innings and, though they folded for 196, gave them a 300-run lead. Bilawal Bhatti was the pick with the ball, completing a five-for. SNGPL were then in big trouble at 31 for 3, before a steadying, unbroken 61-run partnership between Khurram Shehzad and Ali Waqas took them to 92 for 3 at stumps, setting up an interesting final day.

Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) took control of their game against Multan on the second day at the Multan Cricket Stadium. Their new-ball pair of Yasir Arafat and Rahat Ali combined to restrict the hosts to 129 in their first innings, in reply to 304. Multan was made to follow on and lost three wickets cheaply again. Moinuddin, though, scored Multan's first half-century of the match and went to stumps unbeaten. He will be a key if they are to wipe out the 98-run deficit on day three and make KRL bat again in this game.