Key events
5th over: Pakistan 12-1 (Abdullah 3, Babar 8) Babar lashes at that one! Great statement of intent from the Pakistani pulveriser. Only a finger flung to the right prevented a boundary on that occasion. He gets two runs from Starc. And now Abdullah runs a fast – and risky – single. For once, Cummins is imperfect, a wild throw negating any chance of a runout. Babar is back from a couple of weeks off. He’s been playing golf and, judging from that first shot of the over, has brought his long irons to the MCG today. He drives at Starc’s final delivery and draws a misfield from Sean Abbott. Three runs.
4th over: Pakistan 5-1 (Abdullah 2, Babar 2) Here is Cummins, bustling to the crease. Babar Azam came to the middle after the loss of Ayub and immediately spanked neat two from Starc to draw even with Abdullah. The Pakistan batters can’t do better in this over, with Cummins bang on target straight away. It’s a maiden.
WICKET! Pakistan 3-1 (Ayub bowled Starc 1)
Starc strikes. That ball was fuller and faster and Ayub pushed forward and got a thick and ugly inside edge into the stumps.First blood to the home side! It was a tentative shot from the young opener, normally an attacking batter, but nerves got the better of him on that occasion and Australia have their first scalp of the match.
3rd over: Pakistan 3-0 (Ayub 1, Shafique 2) Starc returns. His first over tickled the speed gun at 136kph but there’s a deeper bend to the back this over. Ayub leaves the first few alone, keen to build a big innings and see off the Australian assassin…
2nd over: Pakistan 3-0 (Ayub 1, Shafique 2) Saim Ayub now has the strike to Australia’s captain Pat Cummins and he gets some bat on the first delivery, not much but enough to run a single. Pakistan are off the mark and so is Ayub. Now Shafique gets off his duck with a strong punch through point. Glenn Maxwell retrieves it in the outfield. Now Cummins the conjuror appears! His fourth ball is a beauty, just back of a length and it whizzes past the edge of Shafique’s flailing blade. Good comeback by the skipper.
1st over: Pakistan 0-0 (Saim 0, Shafique 0) Abdullah Shafique has survives the first couple of deliveries and already Starc has extracted a slight hint of swing back into the right-handed batter. Third ball is a fat full-pitched yorker on the offside and Shafique has a swish at it but is beaten for pace. He can’t get near the fifth and dead bats the final delivery. A maiden to get us started
Mitchell Starc has the new ball and we are about to get under way with the first ball of the Australian international summer…
Wiradjuri elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin is delivering a gentle and generous Welcome to Country to the teams and a small but vibrant MCG crowd. Melbourne is smack bang in the middle of its Spring racing carnival and many locals have taken today off work the Melbourne Cup, “the race that stops a nation”. Famously, American author Mark Twain, attended the Cup in 1895, and wrote: “The grandstands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium of colour, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is vivacious, excited, happy.”
Pat Cummins wins the toss and Australia will bowl first at the MCG
That means we’ll have to wait for the fireworks from young master Fraser-McGurk and we’ll have to content ourselves with the greatest fast bowling cartel in the cricket world. Players are taking the field at the MCG and we’ll have the first ball soon.
Pakistan have long been an unpredictable cricket team and few predicted their Test series win over England last month. Having run up a first innings total in excess of 500, they looked primed for victory yet spectacularly capitulated to lose the first Test by an innings. Yet, under the calm resolute leadership of Gillespie, they fought back to win the next two Tests. Here’s how James Wallace made sense of such madness…
Regardless of who wins the toss, many cricket fans will be hoping to see Australia’s 22-year-old batting superstar Jake Fraser-McGurk unleashed.
Despite being the new coach of Pakistan, Jason Gillespie is a beloved figure in Australian cricket. The great-grandson of a Kamilaroi warrior, “Dizzy” is recognised as our first male Indigenous Test cricketer.
Sydney-born and Adelaide-raised, Gillespie’s celebrated 71-Test career produced 259 wickets plus another 142 scalps from his 97 ODIs. With his glorious mullet, magnificent moustache and a fast-bowler’s sneer that could curdle a batter’s bone marrow at 10 paces, he was a dream to watch and a nightmare to face.
Curiously, Gillespie’s most famous moment came with the bat: his maiden Test century was a scarcely-believable unbeaten 201 in Bangladesh – the highest score in history by a nightwatchman and an innings compiled over 574 minutes and 425 balls.
Mohammad Hasnain might be familiar to a few Australians. The beanpole quick with the lightning right-arm was first sighted on these shores in 2019 when he made his ODI debut as an 18-year-old. Back then he was regularly nudging the speed gun at 150kph but injuries have derailed his career and cut into that express speed. Five years later he makes a welcome return as a 24-year-old for a 10th white-ball match for Pakistan.
Hasnain looked pretty good in MCG nets on Saturday as he rolled in under the watchful eye of Pakistan’s new Australian coach, Jason Gillespie…
Preamble
Angus Fontaine
Greetings cricket fans! Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the first men’s one-day international between Australia and Pakistan. This is game one of a three-match series and today’s action is coming to you from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. I’m Angus Fontaine and I’ll be steering you through the first fusillades of action.
Although these countries met in January for a Test series won by Australia 3-0, it’s been more than a year since they last crossed swords in the ODI format. That clash was at the 2023 World Cup clash in Bengaluru and Australia won by a 62-runs after a memorably mammoth opening stand of 259-runs between David Warner and Mitchell Marsh.
Much to Pakistan’s relief, neither of those veterans will be in the Australian squad today. Warner has retired at last and Marsh is on ice (ie. paternity leave) for the upcoming Test series against India where he will have to shoulder the bowling load of the injured Cameron Green. With master blaster Travis Head also enjoying the flush of fatherhood, it will be Matt Short and Jake Fraser-McGurk opening for the men in gold.
Pat Cummins returns as captain for Australia for this series and leads a formidable XI of Matt Short, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Steve Smith, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne, Aaron Hardie, Glenn Maxwell, Sean Abbott, Mitchell Starc and Adam Zampa.
Pakistan are fresh from a stirring Test series victory over England in England and have a new white-ball captain in Mohammad Rizwan, the 32-year-old from Peshawar in his 73rd ODI for Pakistan. They also have some new blood in their matchday XI with batter Muhammad Irfan Khan to debut and Kamran Ghulam to play his second ODI. Their four-man pace attack shapes as Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf and the two-metre tall Mohammad Hasnain, who has been clocked at 155.1 kph!
Australia is experiencing a late-Spring heatwave so we have a warm, cloudy day in Melbourne and a clear forecast for this evening’s day-nighter. Play gets under way at 2.30pm AEST and you’re free to shoot me on email at any stage with interesting stats and stories, words of encouragement or clarifications for any errors as I clatter away.
Until then batten ‘em down and buckle ‘em up because the action isn’t far away.
