England fast bowler Stuart Broad was all of the praise for Pakistan's newest batting sensation Babar Azam after the prized wicket on curtailed day 2 of the second Test in Southampton. Azam fell three short of his third half-century score on English soil after nicking behind on 47 as Broad took the first wicket for England on Friday.
After twice failing to delivering moving away down the outside-off channel, Babar sought to score only down the leg side hence leaving almost 22 per cent of his deliveries on day 1 and around 33 on the second day which showed a hint of movement down the channel. In fact, the most productive shot in his 47-run knock was the flick, instead of his picturesque cover drive.
On a start-stop day 2, Babar was Pakistan's most productive batsman until lunch taking the overnight score of 126/5 to 155/5 at lunch.
But after toiling long and hard, Broad finally managed to draw that softest of nick off Babar's outside edge with the delivery on the fourth stump which was comfortably taken by Jos Buttler.
"Babar Azam is a really classy player which you can see by some of the shots he played. We knew he would be a big wicket and I was pleased to get him out," Broad told BCCI after the day's play while speaking about the dismissal.
Talking about the performance of the home bpwling attack, Broad said, "I feel like if we’d taken a couple more chances and been a bit more ruthless with the ball, we could have bowled Pakistan out a bit cheaper, We’ve controlled the rate really nicely, we just need to make sure we get this wicket early tomorrow to make sure we don’t undo a lot of the hard work we’ve done."
He added, "We’re actually a little bit disappointed that we haven’t bowled Pakistan out already – we’ve created enough chances, and the ball has certainly done enough, but we haven’t managed to hold onto those chances or strike when we needed to as a bowling attack."
Pakistan eventually finished the day on 223/9 following a gutsy unbeaten 60 by Mohammad Rizwan.
