Opener Usman Khawaja missed a century on Monday by nine runs and Steve Smith failed to complete 8,000 runs as Australia finished the opening day of the third and final Test at 232-5 against Pakistan in Lahore. Khawaja followed up his 160 in the drawn Karachi test with a calm 91, while Smith scored 59 as the pair helped Australia recover from Shaheen Shah Afridi’s double strike at the start of the match.
At the close, Cameron Green was on 20 and Alex Carey on eight, surviving the second new ball until poor light brought two overs to a close earlier.
Australia, which won the toss and chose to bat on a brownish Gaddafi Cricket Stadium pitch, owed their recovery to a third wicket score of 138 between Khawaja and Smith.
Shaheen had Australia in trouble at 8-2 in the third left when he caught David Warner lbw for seven and when Marnus Labuschagne had a lead over wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan for a duck two balls later.
But Pakistan-born Khawaja played in a similar vein, earning him scores of 97, 160 and 44 that have so far failed to materialize in the series before falling painfully short of a 12th Test century.
Khawaja took down spinner Sajid Khan to slip out where Babar Azam ducked to the right to make a brilliant one-handed catch.
Khawaja batted 328 minutes, hitting nine limits and a six.
Smith pushed spinner Sajid for two to reach his 36th Test half century, but fell over after the tea in the second when he was trapped leg-before by pacer Naseem Shah.
He came up just seven short in completing 8,000 test runs.
Naseem then left Travis Head for 26 to finish 2-36 while Shaheen had numbers of 2-39.
The three-game series is 0-0 after the tests in Rawalpindi and Karachi ended in a draw.
Australia is touring Pakistan for the first time since 1998, having previously refused to play in the country due to security concerns.
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The match marks the return of Test cricket to Lahore for the first time since a 2009 terror attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
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