Taking a quick look back at the history at the venue, where Pakistan successfully chased down 377 in the final innings in 2015, Law hoped the pitch would behave similarly when Australia resume their chase on the final day. "History says that teams have chased big totals here before," he said on Friday (July 29). "Those pitches might have been prepared differently than for us, coming in. (But) it's not going to be a day-five pitch.
We have played like three days thanks to the rain and light interruptions.
"This pitch doesn't look like deteriorating a great deal. If you look at the footmarks, big Mitchell Starc has been bowling left-arm over, and has hardly broken the surface. It's hard as concrete and it's very dry.
Overnight these conditions do tend to get the moisture back up into the surface. The first half-hour to an hour can be tricky. But the wicket drying up shouldn't be a problem. The first two days it was tacky in the mornings. But it's progressively dried out, and is probably at its driest now."
Law, wary of the hosts' three-pronged spin attack, put his weight behind the team's overnight batsmen, Steve Smith and Adam Voges, to build a strong partnership from where the rest of the batting line-up could chip in with contributions. The batting coach opined that Australia's chances of scaling the target will depend on the duo's survival of the morning session. "The two guys who are batting at the moment need to put up a good partnership," he said. "Everyone else has to chip in where they can. We are still confident. We always want to play to win and not to draw."
No comments:
Post a Comment