SL vs Pak, 1st Test: Babar Azam's ton keeps Pakistan alive against Sri Lanka
Jul 17, 2022
Galle [Sri Lanka], July 17 : Babar Azam fought valiantly along with the lower-order to keep Pakistan in the game against Sri Lanka on day two of the second Test in Galle.
Earlier, opting to bat first, Sri Lanka put a total of 222 runs on the board. Pakistan started their first innings against the hosts with openers Shafique and Imam-ul-Haq who went back in the pavilion cheaply.
While wickets continued to collapse at one end, Babar put up a gritty resistance at the other. As he has made a habit of, he broke yet another record during his innings - he became the fastest Pakistan batter to 10,000 international runs across formats and fourth overall.
The struggle continued for the Pakistan skipper who received some support first from Yasir Shah and then Hasan Ali. Babar Azam added critical 27 and 36 runs for the 8th and 9th wicket respectively and also brought up his 22nd Test fifty in the process.
At 148/9, Sri Lanka were in the driver's seat and were on the verge of taking a big lead. However, what followed was an amazing show of determination and resistance from the final wicket pairing of Babar and Naseem Shah.
Babar did the majority of the batting in the innings. Naseem showed incredible patience for a No.11 and it wasn't until the 39th ball of his innings that he got off the mark.
The Pakistan skipper, on the other hand, mixed caution and aggression brilliantly to reduce the first-innings debt. He brought up his 7th Test hundred, an outstanding knock under the circumstance and kept going even after getting to the milestone.
It was Maheesh Theekshana who brought respite to Sri Lanka by getting Babar out lbw and bringing an end to an 80-run stand. By the end of the innings, the hosts were left with a minor lead of four runs.
Pakistan got the big wicket of Dimuth Karunaratne before stumps, with Sri Lanka leading by 40 going into day three.
