SA vs Pak 2024-25 – Pakistan waste the opportunity to score with so much available

So 211 is hardly a disgrace; yes, it might even be acceptable. But offering nine wickets to Bosch and Paterson may be less. Although Pakistan hadn’t passed 200 in the first innings in South Africa since 2013, being satisfied with the total is a bit like going to a buffet and walking out after grabbing a cappuccino. It may have solved the immediate need, but there was so much more available. The invitation to that buffet had somehow been secured; the hard part was done.

There was something wrong with going after the expansive drive, but the execution went horribly wrong. Until then, batters had been beaten 11 times, survived an lbw shout on the umpire’s call and popped a couple into unlikely holes. An hour after surviving some of the most challenging fast bowling on one of the more trying grounds, Pakistan had given away the breakthrough to a first-ball half-tracker from a nervous debutant.

Pakistan continued to work their way through the buffet table. Babar Azam received a short and wide from Paterson and hung his bat out so carelessly that he might as well have been holding out a stray steak knife in a packed room. It had similarly deadly consequences; he would be dismissed from the room before he had begun to get his money’s worth.

Time after time the day followed the same pattern. Rabada threatened without finding the end product, but there really wasn’t much else to fear from the rest of the attack. Jansen was largely ineffective and even Pakistan in this kind of debauched mood did not give him any wickets. ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data showed that the batsmen had control against 78% of his deliveries, the highest against any bowler from either side all day.

However, it is somewhat of a mystery how Bosch did not go similarly unrewarded. Pakistan’s control percentage against him was not much better at 74% and he sent down 38 balls – almost half of his entire innings – bowling wide outside off stump or leg. But he must have been exceptionally good this year, because Pakistan filled his Christmas stocking to the brim.

Saud Shakeel seemed to have decided on a whim that he no longer wanted to be known as the most conservative batter in the side and raced out of the blocks with 14 runs in his first five balls; it is his fastest start in any format. When Bosch sent one down that really deserved to be put away, however, Shakeel fed it through to the wicketkeeper and his short Boxing Day hurled belligerently over before it ever blossomed.

Aamer Jamal was more successful with this strategy; it is a sign of South Africa’s indifference to the ball over large periods that he and Salman Agha clawed back to put Pakistan in another respectable position, approaching 200 for 6 at tea. In the end, however, Jamal found a similarly inappropriate way to fall to the debutant, playing with a horizontal bat to a ball too close to cutting and chopping it. Pakistan were unable to help lump their dismissals together to undo all the good work that preceded them, as if regurgitating the contents of a recently consumed nutritious meal. They lost three wickets for no runs in eight balls and the innings was effectively completed.

Although he was back to his positive self, Ghulam described the atmosphere in the dressing room as “excellent” after the day and admitted there were regrets. “Rizzy (Mohammad Rizwan) and I played very well. We had it under control and it was in our hands and I shouldn’t have played the shot I did.”

It seems that it is not today’s result that disappoints Pakistan, but the waste of it. For 211 in Centurion under cloudy skies means they may have left with full bellies, but the sustenance on offer hasn’t really been utilised.