Something positive from England!

Pakistan might call this tour as a successful one, but England tour is just round the corner with know THAT won't be our home-series!
Pakistan's chasing traumas Sydney 2010 - An Australian collapse for 127 in the first innings had left Pakistan with a target of 176 in the fourth innings - their best opportunity to end a winless run against Australia since Sydney 1995. The openers added a brisk 34 but wickets fell in clusters thereafter and Pakistan were shot out for 139. Dunedin 2009 - Umar Akmal's debut Test. After making a hundred in the first innings, Akmal was once again the lynchpin, scoring 75, as Pakistan attempted to chase 251. They had a fair chance at 95 for 3 and 161 for 4, but lost their last six wickets for 57. Galle 2009 - Pakistan were 36 for 0 and then 71 for 2, only 97 runs away from victory. Then followed a collapse to rival all other collapses during which eight wickets fell for only 46 runs. Salman Butt was the only one to make it past 20. Port Elizabeth 2007 - The last time Pakistan successfully chased a target of less than 200. Set a target of 191, Pakistan were facing defeat after Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini had reduced them to 92 for 5. Younis Khan, who batted steadily, and Kamran Akmal led a revival that grew into a match-winning partnership of 99, securing a five-wicket victory.

Atlast a vacuity of 15 years was shattered tonight by Pakistan on Australia. I can bet every Pakistani was on the edge of the seat when wicket tally started to move from 3 to 4, than 4 to 5 and when the scores were tied at that vary moment when Kamran Akmal got brilliantly caught off the slips by Mike Hussey, honestly speaking I had my heart in my mouth, and when Umar Gul hit the winning run, my breath got well.

It was SOMEwhat a job well done still slipups can be seen in the batting department, which apart from this time, backfired 3 times in the series (keeping in mind there were only 4 innings for Pakistani batters to bat in this short series), but there can be some positives from this England tour specially in youngsters department where we had much better bowling than Aussies in both the tests, and in batting Azhar Ali had the temperament and got into the limelight! As far as the Junior Akmal concern he didn't impressed me much apart from being too interactive on the field!

But need of a player with the likes of Younus is required as apart from Junior Akmal there isn't a batter who could hold the pillars of Pakistani middle order and under him I am sure Azhar Ali will be groomed the most.

Now when this Pakistan Australia series is concluded, England's series is gonna start just in a 5 days time from now! and England players would be keenly watching this series and observing them, so one might think that another tough fight is in the pipelines for Pakistanis as Pakistanis wont have the privilege of being the host while playing against the England.

And as far as the captaincy woes concern, let us give time to Salman Butt, even a road when gets laid, needs time to get hard before it can be opened for traffic, so skipper needs sometime too and there should be strong hold on players else they'd get out of control like we saw just after ICC World T20 2009...