The first Twenty 20 International (T20I) between Australia and Pakistan gave a fair idea about the form of both the teams. Pakistan was poor with the bat and choked from the start while Australia after a few faints in the beginning somehow managed to reach the low target in the end.
Australian had a few nervous moments in the beginning when they came out to chase a score of 96 put up by Pakistan. The bowling was settled and the newcomers were all fantastic in their opening game. George Bailey will replace Aaron Finch as the captain for the ODI’s but they will miss the service of Shane Watson and Michael Clarke who have been ruled out of the ODI series after suffering from injuries. Mitchell Marsh who missed out of the T20I due to a hamstring injury in Champions League T20 (CLT20) is likely to be back with team for ODIs. Overall, the Australian side looks neat both in the batting and bowling departments but it would be interesting to watch Nathan Lyon bowl as there will be some spin on offer in UAE.
Pakistan will need to do a lot of thinking before step out to play the first ODI. There batting lacked maturity, thinking and they totally failed to anchor there batting after winning the toss. The batting looks pretty good on the paper but they have failed to justify the talent on the field. Saad Nasim who carried his good form from CLT20 scored the highest runs but he is not included in the ODI squad. The 50 over format will be more demanding for the batsmen and Misbah-ul-Haq’s role will become more important in the middle. The only bright spot about the Pakistan line-up is there fast-bowling. The spin bowling department will be taken care by Raza Hasan who was phenomenal in the T20 match as he gave away only 17 runs and picked two wickets. All eyes will be focused on how the Pakistan batting behaves on the occasion of first ODI at Sharjah.
If Australia manages to rush through the rusty Pakistan batting the match will be again turn out to be a one-side equation. It will be a battle between Pakistan batting and Australian bowling on Tuesday.
Squads:
Pakistan: Misbah-ul-Haq (c), Ahmed Shehzad, Sohaib Maqsood, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Shahid Afridi, Raza Hasan, Mohammad Hafeez,Umar Akmal, Fawad Alam, Umar Amin, Asad Shafiq, Mohammad Irfan, Anwar Ali, Wahab Riaz, Junaid Khan.
Australia: George Bailey(c), James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, Brad Haddin (wk), Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Johnson, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, David Warner, Sean Abbott.
(Varun Arorais a reporter with CricketCountry.com. He started as a medium-fast bowler, converted to an opening batsman but finally settled with his passion of writing about the game. His Twitter handle is @varunjgd)
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