{"id":24210,"date":"2025-10-20T12:04:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=24210"},"modified":"2025-10-20T12:04:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:04:14","slug":"pakistan-ride-luck-to-reach-177-3-in-second-south-africa-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=24210","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan ride luck to reach 177-3 in second South Africa Test"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Pakistan took advantage of some poor South African fielding to reach 177-3 at tea on the opening day of the second and final Test in Rawalpindi on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Despite their fielding lapses South Africa&#8217;s spinners removed Abdullah Shafqiue (57) and Babar Azam (16) to check the momentum of the hosts, who won the toss on a spin-friendly pitch.<\/p>\n<p>Shan Masood, dropped on 71 off a luckless Keshav Maharaj, was unbeaten on 77 with two fours and three sixes while Saud Shakeel was six not out at the break.<\/p>\n<p>Shafqiue&#8217;s chancy knock finally ended when he edged Simon Harmer to wicketkeeper Kyle Verreynne after adding an invaluable 111 runs for the second wicket with skipper Masood.<\/p>\n<p>Azam, again cheered by a home crowd willing him to return to form, fell after Tony de Zorzi took a low catch at silly point for Maharaj&#8217;s first wicket.<\/p>\n<p>Azam has gone 29 Test innings without a century.<\/p>\n<p>Maharaj himself dropped Shafique on 15 off his own bowling and then saw Aiden Markram drop the same batter on 41 and 53.<\/p>\n<p>Shafique also survived on nine when a Marco Jansen delivery beat him and hit the stumps after rolling down, but did not dislodge the bails.<\/p>\n<p>In the morning session South Africa&#8217;s only breakthrough came from Harmer, who bowled Imam-ul-Haq for 17 with a sharp turner that beat the bat and hit off-stump.<\/p>\n<p>Fast bowler Kagiso Rabada was also unlucky when Tristan Stubbs dropped Shafique in the slips off the fourth ball of the match for nought.<\/p>\n<p>Harmer has figures of 2-57.<\/p>\n<p>Having won the first Test in Lahore by 93 runs, Pakistan strengthened their attack by including a third spinner in Asif Afridi, dropping fast bowler Hasan Ali.<\/p>\n<p>At 38 years and 299 days, Asif becomes the second oldest Pakistani Test debutant, behind Miran Bakhsh, who made his debut at 47 years and 284 days against India in 1955.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa named three spinners and two pacers.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pakistan took advantage of some poor South African fielding to reach 177-3 at tea on the opening day of the second and final Test in Rawalpindi on Monday. Despite their fielding lapses South Africa&#8217;s spinners removed Abdullah Shafqiue (57) and Babar Azam (16) to check the momentum of the hosts, who won the toss on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}