14, 15 and 16 are the top scores

Well it was fascinating not only to see England win the first test at Nottingham yesterday but also the scorecard was one of its kind when the top three individual scores in the 2^nd innings of Pakistan's batting happened to be 14, 15 and 16. Of course, the score of 14 in the innings was scored by extras and that is no player. These three add up to 45 runs which is more than half of the total score of 80 put up by Pakistan. Recently, a couple of weeks back, Pakistan made news for the right reasons when they bowled Australia for 88 which was their first score below 100 to lose all ten wickets.

Now, they themselves make news this time for the wrong reasons when they lost all their ten wickets for a score 8 runs less than what the Aussies scored. Coincidentally, the aforementioned scorers were the only three which crossed the double digit mark. Extras apart, there were just two Pakistani batsmen who scored above ten and with one making up his mind in leaving out the tail end batsman Danish Kaneria who scored 16, the number reduces to just one batsman out of 11 scoring double digit. It is nothing but a tragedy that the top scorer in the innings happened to be a number 10 batsman in Kaneria.

One more thing that would fascinate all Pakistan cricket fans would be the fact that the top scorer for Pakistan, with both their innings combined would be another tail end batsman in Umer Gul when he top scored with an unbeaten 65 in the 1^st innings. That was the 3^rd highest individual score in the match after the English batsmen Eoin Morgan and Matt Prior notched up centuries for their team in the 1^st and the 2^nd innings respectively. It was a good toss to win by the England captain Andrew Struass who wisely chose to bat. The scorecard tells us the pitch which was found favoring the bowlers and batting 2^nd would have been inviting trouble.

Of course, hardly any captain wins the toss and elects to bowl first no matter n what pitch he is playing. The Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni can be excluded from the list who is often found making abnormal decisions with reasons which only he justifies after making a fool out of himself and his team. One can see 8 bowlers from the Pakistan side having the red cherry in their hands in the first innings when England scored 364 as against the only 4 bowlers from the English side. This showed the pressure that the Pakistan players were. This was unnecessary with three more sessions and four more days to go in the match. Pakistan needs to learn a lot. Better approach Bangladesh.