Final day drama in the Cricket

Pakistan's Umar Akmal celebrates victory over England








Even though we were only in the 4th day of events at the Brit Oval, it was obvious that this match would be finished before the close of play on the 5th day, with Pakistan only needing 148 runs to win the 3rd test match of this series, and give themselves a chance of drawing the series 2-2.

England's last line of defence was broken in the first over of day 4, with Steven Finn getting one run before Stuart Broad was caught at mid-on by Mohammad Asif. So, with only 148 runs needed to win, this seemed like a straight forward job, but we are talking about a team who usually crumble under pressure.

However, Pakistan were determined to prove all their doubters wrong, but it started badly when Graeme Swann caught Yasir Hameed on the 2nd attempt, after nearly dropping the edge after Anderson's beautiful delivery. This gave England a huge boost of confidence to pull off an unlikely victory.

But there was still a long way to go, and Pakistan showed this by strolling past the 100 run mark, losing only 3 wickets with Imran Farhat, Salman Butt and Mohammad Yousuf all getting decent scores, passing the 30 run mark and the captain Salman Butt was even 2 runs off a half century before being caught by Paul Collingwood. However, I don’t think Butt would’ve been too fussed, with Pakistan only needing 45 runs for a famous victory.

After coming out from lunch on 115-3, we started to see the first signs of Pakistan’s nerves and they made hard work to try and win the game. They lost their 4th wicket for 124 runs, with Azhar Ali being the victim of a very silly run out. It went from bad to worse, however, with Mohammad Yousuf being bowled by Anderson to put Pakistan on 131-5. England started to gain some emphasis in the game, and grabbed another wicket after Kamran Akmal was given LBW from a very good delivery by off spinner Graeme Swann. This led to a very baron spell for Pakistan, and underwent extreme pressure from both Anderson and Swann, and it seemed unlikely they would even get a run.

They did find the 16 runs in the end, and cruised to an unlikely victory when the match started on Wednesday. Some great individual performances including the captain Salman Butt for his 48 in Pakistan’s 2nd innings, and Saeed Ajmal’s very impressive 7-71 in 31 overs. I do think however that England will bounce back from this shock defeat and win the last match at Lords to make it 3-1 in the series.