It is the end of third day's play in Melbourne in the second test match of the three match series between Pakistan and Australia. Aussies are on the verge of beating Pakistan to take an unassailable lead of 2-0.

Cricket is a game of uncertainties and anything can still happen on the fourth or fifth day of this second test match. However several lessons should already have been learnt by Pakistanis, which can be used to develop highest caliber test team of the near future.

In the first innings of the test match, Pakistan fell apart in the end from 286/3 to be all-out for only 341. But just look at 286/3, this was done without the presence of world-class Inzimam-ul-Haq. It means that if Pakistan looses their top batsman, the youngsters still have the courage to play out easily one of the best bowling attacks of the world today. First understandable lesson learnt that Pakistan should have complete confidence on their abilities, when they go out to challenge the best teams of the world.

What went wrong at 286/3; the loss of mental toughness. By that time, Pakistan had almost outplayed Aussies for five hours. Then who was the person to first loose the psychological sturdiness? It was himself the stand-in captain of the side, who at Single Nelson (111), went aimlessly down the track to Shane Warne bowling around the wicket to get out stumped. If we go back in time, Javed Miandad, Asif Iqbal, Zaheer Abbas and others never used to give away their wickets that cheaply after having scored a hundred. They used to take fresh guards from the umpire and begin to build their innings to go past at least the 150 mark.

It was indeed an amazing innings by Yousuf Youhana and needs to be applauded. But when time came to totally consolidate the situation and grab the whole days’ game with a firm grip and playing out the last hour, he gave away his precious wicket so very easily. Once the captain shows such irresponsibility, a team, who plays the mind game so well, like the Kangaroos, will then pounce back on you. By the end of play, Pakistan was reeling at 318/6 on then an easy batting track.

Youhana must realize after watching Martyn score 142, that merely a hundred is not good enough, he has to score well beyond 150, since his team is a mixture of slightly experienced and relatively newcomers in the international arena. Youhana is quite capable of doing what Martyn did for the Kangaroos. If the captain had not got himself out, other batsmen like Younis Khan and Shoaib Malik would also have played with more concentration, dedication and braveness.

This above is thus the second logical lesson learnt hopefully by Yousuf Youhana that how he should read the game more carefully being the backbone of the batting line-up.

It is very much clear that most of the players on the international players have the talents to have reached this platform. But the only difference between them is mental and physical fitness. I am not sure, but may be due to absence of better diet and more polluted environment of countries in Asia as compared to other western countries, physical fitness of players from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh is not at par with other countries. There is obviously a direct correlation between physical and mental fitness. However since we have seen several cricket geniuses from the recent past like Javed Miandad, Imran Khan, Sunny Gavasker, Kapil Dev, Arjuna Ranatunga, Arvind De Silva and several others from these countries, it is incumbent upon the current players of these countries to develop the basic and essential understanding of the finer points of this sports and hopefully the newly developed cricket academies would soon able to accomplish this task.

Now look at Imran Farhat. I agree with Geoffrey Boycott that he is a great batting talent. But if one is unable to understand the intricacies of the modern day mental cricket, it is hard to produce consistent performances against world-class teams like Australia. The way Imran Farhat gave away his wicket in the second innings; it clearly shows that he was unable to read the demands of the circumstances. Although Salman Butt did the same, but since Imran Farhat has been playing international cricket for quite sometime, his pull to a ball from off side the off stump to square leg fielder can be termed sheer carelessness.

In the first innings, there was no obvious target for the openers other than to play out safely the opening spells of McGrath, Gillespie and Kasprowicz. Once they had done that, Australians were frustrated there after till the last hour hiccups by Pakistani batsmen. This target by the openers was achieved through brave and aggressive, but sensible batting (meaning choice of belligerent strokes was appropriate).

In the second innings, the target was clearer for the openers. The short term target was to first make 38 runs to clean the slate. They had already scored 85 in the first innings; merely 45% of those runs were needed from them in the second innings. But this time in the presence of an apparent target, it somehow meant extra burden for the openers rather than being an encouragement. That was where the mental game was lost and both the openers gave away their wickets cheaply, trying to be unwisely aggressive, without first reading the changed character of the wicket (they in some way thought pitch was as fresh as it was on the first morning).

Mistakes were also done by Yasir Hameed and Younis Khan, who both got settled down to reach scores of 23 before giving away wickets to wrong selections of forceful hits. Yousuf Youhana in the second innings was very solid and looked like scoring at least a fifty before he got a very bad decision of the bowling of Warne; doing huge appealing has unfortunately become a part of the game and is now an art; Aussies are masters of that. It is being said that International Cricket Council (ICC) only tolerates one mistake per umpire per match; will Youhana’s decision go in the South African umpire Rudi Koertzen’s record as a mistake, it is not yet known.

This third lesson hopefully learnt in a harsh way especially by the two openers and generally by the other batsmen is that they always need to have short term goals to build their innings and from here onwards they would be more determined not to make such mistakes very often in the future (other than may be an unlucky bad patch).

Pakistan was hampered in the bowling department with only three bowlers. Abdul Razzaq bowled merely seven overs after his mysterious 4 not out of 76 balls with the bat and before his strange sickness for a young man. Hopefully with the Grace of God, he recovers from this ailment completely and quickly (Aameen).

Pakistani team was already playing with one bowler short, as it was learnt during the second day of the test match that Shoaib Malik is barred from bowling in international cricket unless and until he changes his bowling action all together. Team management must have known about this before the start of the test match. They still preferred to go with only four bowlers and not opt for Shahid Afridi as a fifth bowler.

As for Shoaib Malik, he was fast becoming a world-class all-rounder. But now to totally modify his bowling action, this is a most arduous job for twenty-two years old person, having bowled like his present way for the past eight+ years. Serious efforts by Sri Lankan Board resulted in not such severe demands placed on Muttiah Muralitharan; I don’t know, if similar provisions can be salvaged for Shoaib Malik by Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).

With just three bowlers, Pakistan managed to restrict Aussies at one stage to 254/7, which means Pakistan has the capability of getting Aussies out for fewer than 300 runs. At that stage, Aussies were very much overwhelmed to score runs. However by that time, the two fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Sami had lost much of their steam. Pakistan captain made his first mistake of choice in bowling; taking the second new ball. The hardness of the new ball and tired fast bowlers resulted in indiscriminate hitting by Martyn and Gillespie (who even smacked Mohammad Sami for a huge six).

If the captain had given the fast bowlers some breather and bowled Imran Farhat and Danish Kaneria for another ten or twelve overs, it would have been much better. The spinners should have tried just one thing, stop the flow of runs and completely bog down Gillespie; Martyn was already not making swift runs. With the slightly softer old ball and turning pitch, this was very much possible to achieve and would have eventually resulted in buying the wickets of tail-enders by inducing rash heaving strokes. That should have been the policy.

Instead with the harder new ball and exhausted fast bowlers, all the initiative was lost and instead of Pakistan taking 50+ runs lead, Aussies went ahead by 38 runs before getting all out.

Another rational lesson learnt that never go into a test match with only four bowlers and if one is left with fewer bowlers, try to induct policy of containing the runs for a longer stretch of time to let the opposing batsmen give away their wickets and if one has a part-time bowler like Imran Farhat, he should be used for more than five overs to give much needed respite to the fast bowlers.

One overall lesson learnt is that against world-class teams, the pressure needs to be kept on the opposition until and unless the match is over and won. Winning a few sessions or victorious in half sessions is not good enough. Even when one looses half a session to the best team like the last hour of first day and last hour before tea on the third day, one can completely go out of the match and get into all sorts of psychological problems. Mental toughness is indeed the key to success other than of course the talents.

Since cricket is a sport of all possibilities, as I write this piece twelve hours after the end of the third day, anything can still happen on the fourth or fifth day of this second test match. Presently Mohammad Sami is batting with a straight bat almost like Imran Khan. Shoaib Malik is playing with no qualms. Hopefully Abdul Razzaq would able to bat the way he likes to (meaning a quick fire half century). Pakistan also has Kamran Akmal as batting wicket-keeper and Shoaib Akhtar a competent number ten batsman. They have enough talents to muster another 150 odd runs to give a challenging target of just over 200 runs in the fourth innings.

The only question is that do they have the much needed dedication and psychological strength to defy the odds. Although Aussies are on the verge of their three hundredth test matches win, still good luck to Pakistan and all the best of wishes to quality cricket.