He bowled only a one-over spell with ten minutes left, but that was enough to change the complexion of the game
Andrew McGlashan05-Jan-2024Mitchell Starc has had his inswingers. Pat Cummins is, well, Pat Cummins. Nathan Lyon claimed his 500th wicket. Mitchell Marsh is enjoying the finest run of his Test career. David Warner is on his farewell lap.Plenty of Australians have had their moment in the sun in this series. Now it was Josh Hazlewood’s turn. To be fair, his ball to Babar Azam in the second innings at the MCG was worth talking about more, but Australia’s surge to victory meant it got a little lost.In Sydney on Friday, Hazlewood had already opened his account when Shan Masood poked at his second ball of the innings after Australia collapsed to concede a first-innings lead of 14. Now, with ten minutes to go on the third evening, he was thrown the ball again by Cummins. It ended up being a one-over spell, but what an over it was as he cut through an already wobbling Pakistan innings with three wickets.Related
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An edge to slip, the off and middle stump taking a beating, and a nick to Warner. With each wicket, the noise got louder. A big SCG crowd had stayed late into the pink day. It wasn’t quite the scenes in Cape Town that prompted an already immortal line from Ravi Shastri, but this was again Test cricket on fast forward.”You hear a crowd get behind it, and that’s why Test cricket is so exciting,” Alex Carey said of Hazlewood’s over. “You have six hours of play, then the last five minutes you get the crowd going like that. Growing up as a youngster, you play a bit of backyard cricket, you come in and watch the last little bit, and it’s so exciting to see an over like that and a session like that.”The final session had begun with Australia six down in their first innings; it ended with Pakistan seven down in their second and needing a miracle to avoid defeat. Aamer Jamal was still talking positively about Pakistan’s prospects; but even on a pitch playing a few tricks, it will need a remarkable performance.Another whitewash on home soil. Business as usual, then? Well, not quite. Even if they canter to victory on Saturday, Australia will have been pushed close to their limits at times in this series, which is a rare thing to say on their own turf.Last week’s MCG Test was arguably the best men’s game in Australia since the famous game against India at the Gabba in early 2021. This series won’t go down in folklore as that one did, but it is comfortably the best in Australia since then. England were rolled in 2021-22, West Indies brushed aside last summer and South Africa overwhelmed.Josh Hazlewood rattled Pakistan with three wickets in an over•Getty ImagesPrior to India’s visit in the Covid-19 season of 2020-21, Pakistan and New Zealand had been beaten by whopping margins in five consecutive Tests the previous season. The 2018-19 summer was another famous one for India and stood tantalizingly at 1-1 after two matches, but the edge was taken off a little by the absence of Warner and Steven Smith.The point of all this is that to challenge Australia at home is a rare achievement. Ultimately, it appears Pakistan’s batting will have proven too brittle – and their catching too poor – to break the back of the Australians. But they have gone where many teams have not been able to. Until their late slide, they had again clung to Australia’s coat-tails.When Marnus Labuschagne and Smith had laid the base for a strong first innings with a stand of 79 in 29.5 overs, Mir Hamza went around the wicket to remove Smith with a well-set off-side catching ring. Smith has made important contributions in this series, but has had to work very hard. His strike rate sits at 39.25, only the fourth time he has struck at below 40 in his career – and three of those have come since 2022.Agha Salman then produced one of the balls of the series to rip through the gate of Labuschagne, while Travis Head’s lean series continued when he was lbw to Jamal. Over the next couple of hours, it again looked like Australia were taking a grip of the game when Marsh, using up his share of good fortune along the way, and Carey added 84 to approach Pakistan’s first-innings total. But on the stroke of tea, Sajid Khan squeezed one between Carey’s bat and pad to graze the top of the leg bail.After the interval, Marsh drove to mid-off, and the tail was blown away by Jamal, who has left an indelible mark. Not many would begrudge him if he was named Player of the Series even if it was 3-0 to Australia. For the first time since the MCG Test against India in 2020, Australia trailed in the first innings at home. Their lower order had also been put in the shade by Pakistan’s: on the first day, the visitors’ last wicket had added 85, and the last four 123.Mitchell Starc clean bowled Abdullah Shafique•Getty ImagesBut then Australia flexed their muscles with the ball in the second innings. Starc produced a first-over gem that snaked back between Abdullah Shafique’s bat and pad to condemn him to a pair. The SCG had found its voice again, and you wondered whether the home side would get on an unstoppable roll.”The crowd can feel that,” Carey said. “They clapped that whole over when he was charging in. You get a fast left-armer steaming in with the new ball, [and] it’s pretty hard to keep out an inswinger like that. He was in the contest today; he was grumpy. Think we left him stranded. He probably felt like he was going to get some runs.”Saim Ayub had been handed a tough examination to open on his Test debut, and, like Shafique, had been on a pair. He avoided that in the second over, but all of a sudden decided to show some of his T20 skills, scything Starc through backward point and upper-cutting him for six in the same direction. He greeted Cummins’ first ball of the innings by taking him over mid-on.Australia burned a review for a caught behind against Babar Azam, and were just getting a little twitchy when Lyon trapped Ayub lbw. Three overs later, Babar’s below-par series was over when he edged a drive against Head. The prospect of setting a target of around 200 was receding into the distance. A few minutes later, as Hazlewood wheeled away in celebration after celebration, it was a blip on the horizon.So it will probably be 3-0. In years to come, when only the scoreline is mentioned, it may look like a normal summer’s work for Australia. The reality is, it’s been anything but.